How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families? If you are like me, not very much.

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kramer pulls the curtains on our nation's food industry, exposing "Big Agriculture's" highly mechanized underbelly that's hidden from the American consumer with the assistance of Federal regulatory agencies, such as the USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit head of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and the environment. We are left with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. We have new strains of e coli – the harmful bacteria that cause illness for an estimated 73,000 American annually. "The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you are eating- because if you knew, you might not want to eat it." So says, Eric Schlosler, author of "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" and one of the films principal talking heads.

We learn that the country's top four meatpackers control 80 percent of the beef market. We hear that farmers are subsidized to overproduce corn, which then goes into Coke, Sweet & Low, diapers, Motrin, and cattle feed. We are told that the gut of a cow fed on corn breeds the deadliest strains of E. coli: that Monsanto Co. controls its genetically engineered soybeans: that the Smithfield Hog Process Plant, just off RT 95 in North Carolina, slaughters 32,000 pigs per day. Fifty years ago it took 70 days to raise a chicken to slaughter. Today it takes only 48-days and the big-breasted poultry cannot support their own weight.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stony-field Farm's Gary Hirschberg, Food, Inc reveals surprising, and often shocking truths, about what we eat, how's it produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

The documentary moves briskly through its impressive array of talking points. Consider it a primer on a deadly serious issue that affects all of us, several times per day. The message is that it is up to us, the consumer, to change things in the food industry. Director Robert Kenner's documentary is powerful, maybe even life-changing, easily one of the most important of the recent spate of socially conscious documentaries. Food, Inc is available from Netflix or can be purchased from Amazon for approximately $15. I would be glad to lend you my copy. Just stop by my office in town.

About the Author: Dale Schulz is the President of Schulz Homes, www.schulzhomes.com. He has been building and renovating custom homes in the area for nearly a quarter century. He is also the President and Founder of Virginia Renewable Energy, which retrofits new and existing homes with renewable energy systems, such as solar PV panel and wind turbines. You contact him as well as send your questions for future columns to dale@schulzhomes.com. His phone number is 540.687.3367. Schulz Homes office is located on North Hamilton St.