Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food will make you feel sick

❘ Published: 2023-08-02T15:30:41

Bill Marler in Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food

Netflix

Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food is set to take the US food industry to task – here’s what you need to know about the Netflix documentary.

Netflix is no stranger to shocking documentaries, as the streaming service has continued to pump out different informational films from tragic medical situations, to deepening conspiracies.

And now their latest venture into the documentary genre — Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food — will challenge just how much you know about where your food comes from.

The documentary premieres today, so here’s what the story is all about – if you can stomach it.

What is Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food about?

While the film covers numerous food issues, it opens with the E. coli outbreak that killed four children in 1992 and 1993, after they ate contaminated Jack in the Box burgers. This tragedy led to more regulation focusing on improving fast food safety, but there’s plenty of other regulation left to be done.

Often corporate executives and government regulators are the focus of the documentary, as they are usually the ones responsible for contaminated products. “Sometimes the manufacturers of food don’t think of it as food,” explains Bill Marler in the below trailer. “It becomes a commodity.” Marler is an attorney who began his fight against poor food regulation by representing one of the victims in the Jack in the Box incident.

Another feature in the film is Kenneth Kendrick, a former Peanut Corporation of America plant manager, who blew the whistle after his boss and corporation owner Stewart Parnell altered inspection records in order to ship out contaminated nuts. In 2014 Parnell was convicted, and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison.

More cases are explored, as the documentary tackles the battle between public health and corporate greed. Politicians repeat that the U.S. has “the safest food supply in the world,” but it most certainly doesn’t, if this film has anything to say about it.

The documentary is directed by Stephanie Soechtig, know for his other film Fed Up, which tackled American obesity. It 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.

The official synopsis for the film reads: “A shocking indictment of the food industry and its regulators, Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food exposes how decades of apathy and malfeasance have left the American food supply and its consumers vulnerable to deadly pathogens like e. Coli and salmonella.

“Through revealing interviews with experts and victims’ families, this gripping documentary examines the problem of deadly foodborne illness in the US.”

Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food premieres today, August 2, on Netflix. You can check out our Netflix other coverage below: