You’re hungry and want to eat something healthy. Maybe a salad. Whoa, be careful! Romaine lettuce and spinach are prolific carriers of foodborne pathogens. How about a chicken sandwich? Watch out: it’s still common practice in the industry to sell raw chicken infected with salmonella. What about a healthy peanut butter sandwich? Well, peanuts also have a bad history of salmonella contamination.
This is what you will discover when watching “Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food,” a new Netflix documentary that makes eternal fasting seem like a really good option.
The production is an alarming reminder that we need to pay attention to what we eat, at least if we want to stay healthy. Directed by Stephanie Soechtig – who previously examined the obesity epidemic in the United States in the documentary “Fed Up” – “Poisoned” brings to light issues that linger on the periphery of national consciousness, inconvenient truths about the inherent dangers of what we eat and the negligence of those responsible for regulation. It’s the story of a broken system that often prioritizes profit over public health and safety.
While the film addresses various food issues, it begins with the E. coli outbreak that killed four children in 1992 and 1993 after they ate contaminated Jack in the Box hamburgers. This tragedy led to more regulation focused on improving fast food safety, but there are still many other regulations to be made.
Corporate executives and government regulators are the focus of the documentary, as they are often responsible for contaminated products. “Sometimes, food manufacturers don’t think of it as food,” explains Bill Marler in the film’s trailer. “It becomes a commodity.” Marler is a lawyer who began his fight against poor food regulation by representing one of the victims in the Jack in the Box incident.
Another character in the film is Kenneth Kendrick, a former factory manager at the Peanut Corporation of America, who blew the whistle after his boss and company owner, Stewart Parnell, altered inspection records to ship contaminated peanuts. In 2014, Parnell was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison.
More cases are explored as the documentary addresses the battle between public health and corporate greed. Politicians repeat that the U.S. has “the safest food supply in the world,” but it certainly does not, if this film has anything to say about it.
The documentary is based on the book by narrative journalist Jeff Benedict, titled “Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat.”
According to FlixPatrol, which collects audience data, “Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food” is the most-watched documentary on Netflix worldwide and the ninth most-watched production globally.