#8 Big interview with Rob Kenner of Food, Inc.

Interview with Food Inc. director Rob Kenner, Bucks Happening's Top 10 of 2010

We loved getting to know some of the talented people connected to Bucks County throughout the year, such as Lauren O'Keefe from the girl's singing group Jada, Dana O'Neil from ESPN, and popular radio DJ Lisa Paige.

We loved the eye-opening, Academy Award nominated movie Food Inc and could hardly believe it when we found out that director, Rob Kenner, had attended New Hope's Solebury School. During his fall visit, Kenner was nice enough to sit down with Angela Giovine of Bucks Happening for an exclusive interview.

On his school days…

Hailing originally from Mamaroneck, NY, Rob Kenner boarded at Solebury School back in the 60s. As with many artists, nothing is “black-and-white” with Kenner, or “Robby” as he so warmly introduced himself. He isn’t quite sure when he evolved into a full-fledged film-maker, but knows that at some point during his formative years in Bucks County, he transformed from movie lover to movie maker. He reminisced about sneaking off campus to the Strand Movie Theater, where he fell in love with movies and storytelling. However he evolved, he was a full-fledged film-maker by the age of eighteen.

On the blockbuster movie…

If you have seen the movie (trailer below), you will know that while the movie lifts the veil on certain aspects of the food industry that have been hidden away from the public (cloned meats, genetically modified soy beans and the over-subsidization of corn to name just a few), the broader message is more about the right to know what is in the food we eat. As Kenner points out, “It’s food, but it’s really more than food. It’s really about corporate power…It’s systemic. There is something wrong that these people have such power. People have become, ultimately, indentured servants rather than farmers.” When you zoom out (like with a movie camera, get it?) beyond the detailed issues and look at the system as a whole, Kenner points out that America is “backing wealthy corporations who make food that make us sick.”

The most disastrous part of the system, in Kenner’s mind, is that the government is actually subsidizing the ingredients in unhealthy food. The more-than-substantial U.S. investment in corn, for example, is the reason that you will find corn as an ingredient in nearly every packaged food product on the market (high-fructose corn syrup anyone?). You can even trace its effect to perishable food! It is cheaper for farmers to feed corn to cows than grass, yet cows are not made to process corn, which leads to a long laundry list of issues. The movie shows very poignantly suggests that until government subsidization is removed from the equation, until the playing field has been leveled, it is very difficult for Americans to make radical changes in the way they eat. “We get to vote three times a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Kenner points out. It may not have an overnight effect, but eventually the system will adapt.