Reflections on Food Inc.

My takeaways from the documentary Food Inc are:

1. The government's subsidy of corn and soy products create an incentive for farmers and big businesses to do what they do best, efficiently produce what consumers want. I guess that if we took 90% of the products in the typical grocery story, they would contain corn and soy be it in the typical junk foods, like chips, candy, and sodas, or in food that is considered to be healthy, like juice. Not only are these corn and soy processed foods engineered by scientists at Food Inc. to be tempting (think salt, fat and sugar), but they are very very cheap to buy--and it all starts with the federal government subsidizing the production of the basic ingredients of these processed foods.
2. The government's food industry subsidies disenfranchise the poor who find more value in the BK value meal and not nutrient dense fruits and vegetables. Then that poor family gets diabetes or some other Western diet related disease and has an additional expense, and is even further from buying higher quality foods. These subsidies create a negative feedback loop so the government is indirectly subsidizing unhealthy habits and Western diet related diseases.
3. It's not a sin to buy foods that aren't local. I think it's great to buy in season fruits and vegetables, and to buy local produce at farmer's markets, but no one needs to go crazy locovore. Flash frozen fruits and vegetables are picked and immediately frozen, which locks in precious nutrients, and many stores offer organic flash frozen produce.
4. The food industry value chain, from seed to supermarket, is highly responsive to consumer tastes and preferences. We all vote with our wallets and most of us have the option to buy high quality, nutrient dense food. We should change the food industry's incentive structure by repealing government farm subsidies.
5. The failures presented in Food Inc are not failures or short comings of the free market, because the market is not free so long as the government subsidizes. The failures are a problem with corporatism, not capitalism. There is an important distinction between the two.