JUST EAT IT
Icarus Films
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya
Grade: B+
Director: Grant Baldwin
Written by: Jenny Rustemeyer, Grant Baldwin
Cast: Jenny Rustemeyer, Grant Baldwin, Tristam Stuart, Dana Gunders, Jonathan Bloom, Ken March, Bob Combs, Janet Combs, Cameron Anderson, Harold McClarty, Chris Holland, Dana Hauser, Delany Zayac, Daniel Miller
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 10/29/16
On DVD December 16, 2016
The funniest movie ever made about food is arguably Morgan Spurlock’s documentary “Super Size Me,” in which the filmmaker resolved to eat three meals a day at McDonald’s for one month. He gained quite a bit of weight, and doctors pronounced him malnourished. Similarly and also by contrast, Grant Baldwin’s doc “Just Eat It” is about North Americans who do not eat enough, but don’t get that wrong. These Canucks and Yankees are not suddenly going on diets and watching their calories. They simply buy too much and have to throw out gobs of food. This is outrageous when you consider how many people in less developed nations are hungry. Grant Baldwin and Jenny Rustemeyer are determined to put their money where their mouths are by resolving to eat only thrown-out food for six months, though they make one exception: they will not refuse anything offered by their friends when invited at their homes.
Result: they spent $200 on groceries, which is one dinner at a classy New York restaurant would charge. And by carefully making lists in their computer, they discovered that they ate $20,000 worth of food, none of it spoiled, even if beyond the sell-by dates.
The couple, who are lucky enough to live in Vancouver—considered by some the most livable city in our hemisphere—found nourishment in some obvious places and in some unusual ones as well. On their very first day they cleared out Baldwin’s brother’s refrigerator just before the man was to move out. Sure enough the guy, like Baldwin and Rustemeyr’s Everyman, was loaded down with far more than they could eat.
At the farmer’s market in their home town and also at supermarkets that have culled bins of food, they pick up items that nobody wants to buy: a zucchini that is not the shape people are accustomed to. They note that people will not buy an item unless it’s surrounded by others of the species, thinking that there must be something wrong with such a leftover.
They discover amazing supplies of other food such as granola by the dozens finding a final rest in an area “the size of a small swimming pool.” In a photo shoot, where movie producers spent hours getting food to look the most scrumptious, they pick up when the crew leaves.
They visit a peach farm where peaches are sternly graded for supermarket use. Grocery stores insist on perfection in looks, holding that people will not guy anything with a blemish. It’s simply amazing to see what an abundance of fruits and vegetables are grown on our farms, a good reason for our wealth since food is cheapest where it is plentiful.
There’s a problem in that most thrown-out food will not be dropped in the woods where it can be composted or given to farm animals. In the landfills, the food decomposes releasing methane gas, a major pollutant of the atmosphere. A number of folks are interviewed, contributing to variety, and there are thankfully no talking heads speaking into a screen rather than to people. Baldwin is behind the lens as well, with Alex Greenberg as visual effects supervisor showing us how a green pepper slowly rots and how some farmland changes from pure soil into fields of green.
Forty percent of our food is wasted. Imagine how much fatter Americans would be if we ate everything that we bought? Message to North Americans: cool it. Stop overbuying food. You’ll only discard almost half of what you purchase.
Unrated. 75 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – B
Technical – A-
Overall – B+
