Food Inc. is a documentary that criticizes the food processing industry in America and shows what is “behind the scenes” of the making of American processed foods. The documentary aims to show the audience what is the food industry is hiding from them. It lifts the veil that prevents the people from seeing the process by which the food they eat is made. Through interviews with various people, the movie presents the controversy behind processed foods. Visuals and other techniques are used to show the problems hidden from the eyes of human race. It opens up the eyes of the audience and makes them conscious of the secret world of the food industry. Through different scenes, the film was able to present the different rhetorical appeals—ethos, pathos, and logos.
The film starts with the narrator saying how the “fresh food” we see in the market are not what we think they are. The narrator gives out many statements about how the food we buy in the market are not the same as the food being sold before. He gives a detailed background on how the food industry has evolved over the years. The film then shows an interview with a farmer named Carole Morison. Carole gives the audience a first-hand account on how the chickens are kept, fed, and treated. After asking dozens of farmers, she was the only one who allowed the Food Inc. staff and team for a look inside the barn. Inside the barn, chickens are scattered everywhere. The chickens can barely walk due to their large heavy bodies caused by the GMOs that were injected in them. Some even died because they could not cope up with the fast growth of their body. Carole then mentions that all farmers are under a contract that keeps them from saying anything about how they handle the farm. To add to that, the company that Carole works for, Perdue, refused to be interviewed, making it even more obvious that the food industry does not want people to know what is behind the curtain. All of these add to the credibility of the film and yields an ethos appeal.
The film continues by introducing the Gonzales family, a family suffering from what has become the food industry. The audience are shown the scene where the family buys from Burger King, a fast food restaurant. The film then shows on the screen the money that cost them to buy the fast food, showing how cheap those foods were. The camera then follows them to a market where they struggle to buy and choose vegetables and other healthy foods because they we’re all too expensive. In this particular scene, the film aims to raise the question, “Is health a luxury that you can’t afford?” This raises sympathy toward the struggles of the family. The audience are then told the story of Barbara Kowalcyk’s son, Kevin, who died from Escherichia coli after eating from a fast food restaurant. In segments of Barbara’s interview, the film shows pictures and videos of Kevin, showing how full of life he was. Both of the stories of the Gonzales family and Kevin Kowalcyk appeal more on to pathos because both accounts create sympathy towards their story.
Throughout the documentary, the logos appeal was prevalent. From start to end, the film gives facts, such as the texts that appear on the screen, as an evidence to support their claim. Though some parts of the film bends toward the pathos and ethos appeal, they are also examples of logos. One example of logos is when the film explains the bad conditions of the cows. The film shows that the cows are fed with corn instead of grass because it is cheaper. To add to that, an expert in the film tells that cows are not designed to eat corn. For this reason, this increases the risk of food poising, such as E. coli, in cows. Furthermore, one particular text that appear which said, “The average human consumes 200 pounds of meat per year,” show how much dangerous the risk is.
In conclusion, the film was effective in not only persuading the audience, but also supporting their claim by giving evidences and using the three rhetorical appeals—ethos, pathos logos. However, the film was slightly bias because it was only a one-sided argument. As seen in the film, the companies refused to be interviewed. Their voices were left out, not letting the audience know their side. Regardless of this fact, the film gives an effective criticism against the American food industry.
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