Food, Inc.
Metascore
80 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 28 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 28
  3. Negative: 1 out of 28
view
per page
  1. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    100
    It's not a pretty picture. But Food, Inc. is an essential one.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Amy Binacolli
    100
    A mind-boggling, heart-rending, stomach-churning expose on the food industry.
  3. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    100
    A scary movie that's also funny, touching and good for you.
  4. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    100
    Food, Inc. is hard to shake, because days after you've seen it, you may find yourself eating something -- a cookie, a piece of poultry, cereal out of the box, a perfectly round waxen tomato -- and you'll realize that you have virtually no idea what it actually is.
  5. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Gary Goldstein
    100
    Essential viewing.
  6. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    90
    An engaging and often wrenching film, Food, Inc. covers a wide range of material, including the horrific, the humorous and the exemplary.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Robert Sietsema
    90
    Expertly crafted documentary.
  8. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Cliff Doerksen
    90
    Smart, gripping, and untainted by the influence of Michael Moore, this muckraking 2008 documentary transcends anticorporate demonology to build a visceral but reasoned case against modern agribusiness.
  9. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    Eating can be one dangerous business. Don't take another bite till you see Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., an essential, indelible documentary that is scarier than anything in the last five Saw horror shows.
  10. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    I figured it wasn't important for me to go into detail about the photography and the editing. I just wanted to scare the bejesus out of you, which is what Food, Inc. did to me.
  11. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    83
    Like many social issue documentaries, Food, Inc. is better at addressing problems than offering solutions: its endorsement of organic food in particular feels a little flimsy. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining and fast-moving enough to make audiences intermittently forget they’re consuming cinematic health food.
  12. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    80
    Though slickly packaged, Robert Kenner's unsparing exposé is harder to watch than any horror film.
  13. Empire
    Reviewed by: Phil Wilding
    80
    Compelling, entertaining and illuminating documentary which makes you think twice, and then a few more times, about eating anything at all in U.S.
  14. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    80
    See Food, Inc. after dinner, but see it.
  15. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    80
    For many of this movie's likely viewers, the sting built into Food, Inc. is the realization that, without unending effort, they are not all that much freer in their choices than that hard-pressed family.
  16. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    78
    Why wait for 2012? If you're hankering for a taste of the apocalypse, the opening sequence of this eye-opening, stomach-queasing doc has plenty to go on – witness menacing superimpositions on a bleak, blighted landscape – and the hits just keep on coming.
  17. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    If Wal-Mart, the Lucifer of multinational corporations in many liberal eyes, sees the fiscal sense in stocking an increasingly wide array of organic foodstuffs, consumer habits truly are changing. Not fast enough, though, for documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner.
  18. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    Food, Inc. argues that part of the reason why the food industry is so difficult to regulate is that many of the government officials currently assigned to watchdog roles were once employed by the companies they now keep tabs on.
  19. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    The whole thing is as subtle as a watermelon in a bowl of Cheerios but necessary, nonetheless.
  20. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    75
    In many areas, Food Inc. could be accused of being a fast-food version of a documentary – it's everywhere at once, skipping across the surface of a vast subject, and adding nuggets of sweetness to the scary filler.
  21. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    75
    As a result, the slickly produced Food, Inc. is more deeply unsettling than it is out-and-out stomach-turning.
  22. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    75
    Kenner mounts it all with a pleasingly fluent and varied style, which makes it more or less easy to absorb his arguments, even if they're familiar from other books and movies and are presented with unopposed certainty.
  23. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    70
    No question, watching this film is a tough go. Horror films cause less seat-squirming.
  24. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Matthew Sorrento
    70
    And to all you sane folk out there, be prepared when seeing this film: you'll ponder the old adage about being what you eat. For those new to the truth about food, this is a great starting point.
  25. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    The sheer scale of the movie is mind-blowing--it touches on every aspect of modern life. It's the documentary equivalent of "The Matrix": It shows us how we're living in a simulacrum, fed by machines run by larger machines with names like Monsanto, Perdue, Tyson, and the handful of other corporations that make everything.
  26. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    70
    Time and again the movie stops short before it really gets started, as with the debates over the big business of organic food.
  27. Variety
    Reviewed by: John Anderson
    70
    A civilized horror movie for the socially conscious, the nutritionally curious and the hungry.
  28. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    38
    The movie offers very little that food radicals don't already know.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
8.3 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 56 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 18
  3. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. smijatov
    9
    "Food, Inc." certainly manages in its most important goal - to get people thinking. I for one, have definitely been deeply impacted by the film's message and it is quite nice to have a straight-out message presented in a documentary. We're in an age where everyone presents things in this medium, but either tries to manipulate its audience or dumb things down for them. "Food, Inc." has struck a perfect balance between having a point and argument to itself, but also presenting the facts, ideas, and concepts behind it in a way that people can understand but that are not stripped down to their basics so they lose on weight (no pun intended here). Definitely highly recommended viewing - will most surely change the way you look at your food, just as the trailer promised.… Full Review »
  2. FDT44
    8
    Kenner's depiction of the dark, corrupted food industry emanates long before Spurlock's "Mc-bulge," detailing our food's source before it ever reaches our cabinets. What viewers discover, transcends the urge to eat, to such a degree that veganism doesn't seem half bad. The film speaks to the various emotive cognitions the American feels towards their diet, and the visceral tendencies they have when feeling hungry. The result makes for a ponderous dose of speculation, and immanently-driven, self-willed investigations on unveiling the curtain that continues to obstruct and skew the origin of our food. A slice of steak never sounded so bad!… Full Review »
  3. Doehl
    10
    Food, Inc. provides an atmosphere of horror because of simply a no-holds-barred reporting style that refuses to give out to corporate demands or audience fright, but it does manage to provide a happy ending.… Full Review »
See all user reviews »