Growing up in the 1970s, my family would sit down together every night for dinner, and every night I would watch my dad salt and pepper his food before he even tasted it. Not being a big fan of spices myself, I could never quite understand this. We (my sisters and I) would sometimes gently rib him about it, but he never really explained why he felt the need to season food he had not yet sampled. Thanks to Christopher Taylor’s superb new documentary Food Fight, I think I finally understand my dad’s eating habits.

Subtitled “A Story of Culinary Revolt,” Food Fight is a trenchant and often unnerving expose on the state of food in contemporary America. To tell this story, director Taylor (a Harvard graduate, experienced cinematographer, and TV director, making his feature debut here) along with editor Miranda Yousef, weave together several strands, including the origin and rise of the so-called “California Cuisine” and how it functioned – whether intentionally or not – as a political statement against the homogenization the American food industry. Ground zero for this movement was the creation of the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California in the late 1960s. Founded by the alluring Alice Waters, the eatery was a conscious response to the fact that the radicals of the day were, in some ways, embracing the establishment by eating the low-quality junk food that arose largely through the subsidies provided by the U.S. government. Waters wanted to explore the notion that delicious food, created with as little government intervention as possible, was just as radical as a protest march. Waters pioneered the notion of stocking the kitchen wholly through local farmers, but it was really the arrival of a then-unknown chef named Jeremiah Tower (who went on to become the prototype of the “celebrity” chef) that really put Chez Panisse on the map.

Anchored by interviews with experts such as Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food), food activists Tom Philpott, Will and Erika Allen, and Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI), the documentary explores how we went from being a nation on the brink of starvation during the Great Depression, to a country with an epidemic of obesity – pounding down junk food like there’s no tomorrow – in just over a generation. Government subsidies led to the production of huge quantities of cheap, low-quality food. The machinery designed to produce K-rations for the armed forces in WWII was adapted to create the modern “TV Dinner” and led the march toward food that could sustain long periods of shipping and storage at the expense of flavor. Hence, my dad – a young adult when this movement was really taking hold – endured food so bland that he knew it needed seasoning before even tasting it. The crushing blow came when newly-appointed Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz introduced legislation that favored large industrial farms over smaller family-owned ones, providing huge incentives for those who produced what is essentially junk food. Did you know, for instance, that fruits and vegetables are considered “specialty” crops by the U.S. government, and the growers of such receive virtually no underwriting from the feds?

It’s a complex issue, and yet at once quite simple, and Taylor’s film deftly supplies a wide array of information, augmented with some hysterical vintage commercials and excellent original animation by Mark Fearing. The film is crisply edited, always engrossing, and often hilarious, with engaging narration by actor Justin Kirk.

If there is any small quibble to be had with Food Fight it’s that it can’t help but seem a little one-sided, and does little to probe the alternate views of those on the other side of the garden fence. Given the wealth of information for the prosecution, it’s hard to imagine the government would have been able to mount a cogent rebuttal, but it would have provided a bit of symmetry to hear them argue their case.

Still, Food Fight is a muscular piece of propaganda (or, as the director likes to say, anti-propaganda) that is likely to inspire action in its viewers, and that is the mark of a great documentary. Chris Taylor clearly has a passion for this subject, and said passion is rousing. Food Fight will make you think hard about what you are putting in your mouth on a daily basis, and that is a very good thing.

Read my interview with director Christopher Taylor here. Food Fight, a self-financed film in association with November Films, is currently seeking a distributor, and is appearing at various film festivals. For more information, visit the FF website.

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