The future of food revealed?

On my reading week, I finally got a chance to unwind, and I did so by watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. There was something about this movie that provoked a little more reflection post-viewing than usual. So many scenes had triggered flashbacks to events in today’s modern world. I just kept thinking to myself, ‘Is art imitating life? Or life imitating art? This is really eerie.’ I don’t think this film intended on being such a conversation starter, or blog starter for that matter, but it has. Before I go on, here is my spoiler alert so that I don’t ruin the movie for those of you who are hoping to watch it yourself.

** SPOILER ALERT! **

The story’s main character, named Flint Lockwood, is an inventor whose creations always seem to run amok. His very first idea, spray-on shoes, worked so well that they never came off. Despite his setbacks, Flint persists in creating bigger inventions, with his latest being a machine that is able to convert water into food. In his quest to supply more power to his invention, the machine unexpectedly blasts off into the sky and remains there. Little did he know was that water from the stratosphere would enter the machine and thus allow it to rain food. All the while this is happening, Flint encounters a weather reporter named Sam Sparks, who not only plays his love interest but is his partner in crime. She helps to bring attention to the town, to Flint, and to his new invention. Sounds like a cute story doesn’t it? Well it was. But let me explain to you the topics and issues that this movie covered that have left me uneasy about our future with food.

Obesity
Worries over our current obesity crisis manifested itself into one character in particular: the town mayor. Throughout the movie, he constantly tried to turn the town into cruise destination for food, changing the town’s name to Chewandswallow Fallls. Using his political power, he requests more extravagant foods from Flint, going as far as demanding for a “pizza stuffed inside a turkey, the whole thing deep fried and covered in chocolate”. At the end of the movie, this once 4’9 tall mayor has become a morbidly obese blob of goo that requires a motorized wheelchair to move around. Think about the number of times you’ve seen someone who was morbidly obese in Toronto that they required a means of assistance to walk - whether it was a walker, cane or wheelchair. Are we going to see more individuals like this in the future?


Genetically modified foods
The topic of GMOs is essentially the crux of this entire film. Without modifying the composition of water, Flint the inventor would have never been able to make it rain food. The one scene that I thought was particularly interesting (and maybe telling of our future) is the one in which Flint explains the ‘dangeometer’. Amongst his many devices in his lab, Flint also had this gauge which was responsible for letting him know the degree to which the food had mutated. When Sam, who was touring his lab, asked what would happen if the foods ever mutated, Flint’s response was “I don’t know. But don’t worry, that’ll never happen.” His responsible was so very similar to the responses we get today from researchers and government agencies regarding GMOs. The public may have outcries, requesting more information on these foods, but the government pacifies us with a measly hush. Maybe Canada should invest in a dangeometer?



Food accessibility
In the town of Chewandswallow Falls, food accessibility is not an issue. One character sticks her hand outside the window while driving, only to grab hold of a pancake. Talk about breakfast on the go! More notoriously is the restaurant called “The Roofless”. It is what it sounds like: a restaurant with no roof. Patrons just walk in, have a seat, and wait for their food to literally fall into their laps. Think about food accessibility in our day and age. You can buy food almost anywhere and at anytime. It might not rain food here but we do have 24 hours Dominion/Metro and Tim Horton locations. You don’t even need to go to the food anymore…food comes to you!! Delivery of pizza, Chinese food, takeout of any kind - it’s a little ridiculous isn’t it?

Gluttony
This, I will admit, was a HUGE theme in the movie. The landmark event that really got this theme across was the creation of Mount Leftovers. Again, it is exactly as it sounds – a huge mountain of food waste. Being that the town was overwhelmed with leftovers in the street, Flint invented a machine called the ‘out-of-sighter’. Resembling a zamboni, this device used a dust pan to collect foods from the street and load them into a catapult, where they were then launched out of the city. As the food began to pile up, Mount Leftovers was born. In our modern day, we do almost exactly the same thing. Think of the Michigan garbage controversy. How much trash are we producing that we need to ‘catapult it’ out of our country and into Michigan landfills?

Impact on the food industry
I am a very detail-oriented person, so while watching this movie I started to notice the little things, like how the food industry began to change after the introduction of Flint’s invention. Stores, that once sold sardines and only sardines, now changed to meet the needs of the new market. The gas station became an ‘Anti-Gas Tablet’ store. Another sold mouth funnels and bibs, so that people could eat as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Flint’s father, who owned a sardine store of his own, was forced to go out of business, regretfully telling his son, “Techno food is too complicated for an older fisherman like me…” Does this change not sound oddly familiar? (Think smaller, local farms going out of business)

I feel that there were a lot of parts in this movie that were a satire of current issues in the food industry. But maybe this innocent children’s movie holds a much deeper message about the future of food that lies ahead.