‘Meals, Inc. 2’ Review_ A Disappointing Sequel Lacks the First Movie’s Tasty and Revelatory Insights

There’s an unintentionally surreal second in “Meals Inc. 2.” Eric Schlosser, the journalist who wrote “Quick Meals Nation,” is speaking about how the rise of our corporatized, centralized, industrialized meals system stifles the very form of competitors that might pose a problem to it. He reaches again, with a level-headed liberal boomer nostalgia corresponding to that of Michael Moore, to speak in regards to the progress of the center class within the ’50s and ’60s, and the way that was a interval of rising wages for American employees, all of which has light away (a view not so totally different from that of many MAGA believers, however let’s depart that for that one other day).

Right here’s the surreal half. As an instance this postwar reverie, the film accompanies it with a 60-year-old documentary movie clip presenting the surprise of supermarkets, with the digicam lingering on stacks of Campbell’s Soup cans and merchandise like Minute Rice, Ritz Crackers, and Van Camp’s Unique Baked Beans. (The movie makes a degree to incorporate the money register ringing up a complete of $2.99, as if there have been one thing miraculous about that Kennedy-era worth.) Watching the clip, although, all I may assume was: Did the filmmakers get amnesia about the truth that these supermarkets — these merchandise — characterize the whole lot that they’re towards?

That, after all, was the head-spinning message of “Meals, Inc.” again in 2009: that the meals we purchase in supermarkets is, to a major extent, a grand phantasm — processed glop and sugar and chemical substances and glorified cardboard offered as “diet.” (I grew up on Campbell’s Soup, and beloved it, however I’m sorry, what these cans contained was very tasty meals filler.) I’m tweaking the filmmakers, Robert Kenner (who directed the primary “Meals, Inc.”) and Melissa Robledo (who was a co-producer on it), for a trivial 20-second mistake. But it’s a revealing one. “Meals, Inc. 2” has some important if very acquainted issues to say in regards to the disaster state of the American meals system, nevertheless it’s a far much less sure-footed and authoritative documentary than “Meals, Inc.” was. And it carries virtually not one of the earlier movie’s revelatory cost.

The uncertainty of message is there, too, within the part of “Meals, Inc. 2” the place Michael Pollan, the good meals author and crusader, does a mini investigative profile of Not possible Meals, the corporate (launched in 2016) that provides plant-based substitutes for meat merchandise. The primary time I had an Not possible Burger, cooked by a buddy on the yard grill, I had the expertise I feel a terrific many individuals have. I bit into that burger, which tasted similar to an actual burger, and thought, “Wow, they’ve carried out it!” This was not the hellacious veggieburger of historic occasions.

In “Meals Inc. 2,” you possibly can really feel Pollan attempting, in a measured approach, to endorse Not possible Meals. He claims that something we will do to chop down on industrialized meat manufacturing might be a superb factor. On the similar time, he acknowledges that Not possible Meals, in a sure approach, is a Frankenfood firm. We find out how the Not possible Burger is made: by fermenting a genetically engineered yeast to create the energetic ingredient that makes meat style like meat (it’s known as “heme”), after which combining that with merchandise like wooden pulp. The faux meat is freed from hormones or antibiotics. However even Pollan says, “Make no mistake. That is constructed on commodity agriculture.” It’s an ultra-processed meals; it’s not fairly a wholesome meals. And meat — precise, good meat — does present precise diet.

“Meals, Inc. 2” spotlights an entire set of startup corporations which might be providing substitute merchandise as in the event that they had been a part of the meals revolution: plant-based rooster wings, milk made with out cows, espresso with out espresso beans, honey with out bees. We go right into a lab the place they’ll “develop” rooster or beef or pork. Is that this an enchancment — or is it much more Orwellian? Pollan says that we have to “shrink the meat system,” and he’s proper (largely due to how damaging meat manufacturing is within the realm of local weather change). However the film additionally factors out that these merchandise have turn into a save-the-world fetish for tech corporations. “Meals, Inc. 2” is of two minds, which makes it trustworthy but additionally somewhat blurry.

Fourteen years in the past, “Meals Inc.” was a documentary game-changer. It was a part of a motion of movies (and books) that started inspecting how our meals is admittedly made and what it’s doing to us, and whereas I noticed, absorbed, and reviewed at the least a dozen of those movies, and appreciated most of them, there’s no query that “Meals, Inc.” was the visionary work of the style. Watching it was like unplugging from the Matrix. It’s not simply that you just realized about how our meals is saturated in high-fructose corn syrup — you realized that every one too usually, even one thing like a tomato just isn’t fairly a tomato.

“Meals, Inc. 2” makes numerous good factors about points directly financial and ethical: how manufacturing facility farming is merciless to animals, the best way it’s persevering with to squeeze native farmers out of enterprise (“We’ve misplaced half of our dairy farms in Wisconsin since 2007,” says the proprietor of a small dairy farm), the obscenely exploitative wages paid to migrant farm employees and those that work at fast-food eating places, the continued travesty of our processed-food tradition, and the top-down consolidation that continues to escalate. Within the early ’80s, the 4 largest beef corporations managed 25 % of the market. At this time, the 4 largest beef corporations management 85 % of the market. An analogous consolidation has gone on inside the cereal, tender drink, and baby-food industries (which is why toddler method was all of a sudden not out there at a sure level throughout the pandemic). “Why do corporations purchase up their opponents?” asks Schlosser. “It’s as a result of they don’t need to compete.” At the least one story we hear is inspiring, as we meet a fisherman who now farms kelp (in addition to oysters and clams). He’s a part of the rising motion to deliver again particular person farming.

However the reality is that we’ve seen practically all these factors made in different documentaries, notably those who adopted within the wake of “Meals, Inc.” That doesn’t imply the factors have misplaced relevance, or that they aren’t value making once more, nevertheless it signifies that “Meals, Inc. 2” is only one extra respectable however not higher than that meals documentary, and that it lacks the perception-altering qualities that made the unique “Meals, Inc.” a landmark. Our industrialized meals system, run by a handful of multinational firms that management practically the whole lot, seems to be within the means of locking in its personal future, even because the movie argues that that’s not sustainable. The true downside, as Pollan explains it, is the weakening of antitrust legislation that’s been occurring for many years. But you possibly can’t repair that with a authorities that’s damaged — with a Congress the place each events are being paid off to maintain the company system. That’s an issue so overwhelming that “Meals, Inc. 2” doesn’t even point out it.