Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.In 2008, a change was going to come, one American stomach at a time. The grim truth behind how and what the west was eating was exposed by Food, Inc, a much-admired documentary narrated and co-produced by Eric Schlosser, author of bestseller Fast Food Nation, and directed by Robert Kenner. In the wake of the big-screen adaptation of Schlosser’s book and the late Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, the film spotlit the whole US agro-industrial complex, from filthy slaughterhouses to venal supermarkets. Yet it also closed on a loud note of hope that felt, in the moment, not implausible. “You can vote to change this system three times a day,” it said onscreen while Bruce Springsteen sang Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” on the soundtrack.And lo, Big Food transformed. Unhealthy additives are no more; farmers now equitably treated; the Wendy’s Baconator a relic.Forgive the sarcasm. Sixteen years later, it is hard not to feel cynical watching Food, Inc 2. Schlosser returns, and so too Kenner, working now with co-director Melissa Robledo. Again, you leave disturbed by the business of feeding America. Still more so that things have seemingly worsened since the first film. If your mood is bad enough, you might even ask what that says about the impact of the kind of activist documentary Food, Inc was, and Food, Inc 2 now is.The film treats our attention span as slim, speeding through encounters with Iowa farmers, Florida tomato pickers, and slick start-ups growing chicken tissue in steel vats. But the narrative pinball does eventually steady into a single picture: a vast industry dominated by a handful of corporations, whose practices punish land, labour and livestock.Much of this was already said back in 2008. But new developments are dealt with too. One is ultra-processed food, bad for us in ways we are still discovering. The other is realistic fake meat. To the documentary’s credit, it makes a point of acknowledging the latter is also the former. Every patty not made of cattle is a win for the planet, but it can also involve the weirder end of food science.The movie is frank about the ethical riddles that fill our plates, at least for those of us who can afford them. And the essential heft of the story is clear. Any film about food is a film about everything, not least economics. Despite the manic pace, a sturdy case is also made that decades of near-monopolies have left the US food chain anything but a free market.But not even the blandest corporate PR appears on camera. It isn’t clear if invitations were extended, though Schlosser has discussed facing personal aggression from the US food business. Yet while the first film saw websites launched by industry titans solely to rebut it, you suspect the same companies will probably now just ignore the movie.If so, that might tell a wider story about our current standards of accountability. But truly, Food, Inc 2 can feel a little evasive too. Also missing is any mention of the first film, and the fate of the next steps it brightly recommended. In 2008, Kenner et al urged viewers to feed themselves seasonally, locally and organically. So why wasn’t the farmers market the future? What killed better eating? The answers are much bigger than the parallel decline of the campaigning documentary.Still. When we’re duly asked to supply a second helping of optimism, we might at least be told what happened the first time. Otherwise, when “This Land Is Your Land” rings out again, it can feel less like a rallying cry, and more a bitter punchline.★★★☆☆In UK cinemas and on demand from June 7, and on demand in the US now
