Review of Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food

There was a tragic week about a month before writing this when I had the dumbest incident. I was sitting on my couch, the laptop in my lap, when I reached for my tea. I was pretty parched and needed that afternoon tea, and when I raised it to my lips, I was shocked to realize I had missed my mouth.

The tea went all over my computer and that was it. The computer didn’t shut off, but I powered it down immediately and took it to the local Micro Center the next day.

The computer ended up being fine, but I got it back at the end of the week. During this time, I was watching a ton of movies and documentaries on my iPad, and Poisoned was one of them.

And man, this documentary really messed me up, because while I knew the food industry in the United States had some unsanitary practices, this left me with some trauma. I think I’m going to change my eating habits after this one.

Let’s get into the review.

The food industry in the United States is a lot dirtier than we thought already.

This documentary is interesting because it mixes a series of different people to discuss the current ongoing situations in the United States. First we get some officials working within advocacy and awareness groups, a lawyer who sues for the victims of eating like romaine lettuce and ending up crippled, and then there are the government officials and CEOs of the companies that insist that the food is clean and is following protocol.

One of the more interesting stories in this documentary to me, that really brought out that this can happen to anyone, was the girl who ended up eating a salad at Panera Bread and ended up in a coma.

The romaine lettuce used to make the salad had been the source of an outbreak across the country, and at the time of the documentary was made, she had woken up, but it had severely impacted her quality of life to this day.

Some of the key takeaways I got from this documentary is that while raw ground beef will probably be pretty clean, as in the past there were huge outbreaks that killed a lot of children, hence federal action to regulate it, a lot of the other foods we eat won’t be clean.

One of the guys says he always orders his hamburgers to temperature when he eats out, but one of the more chilling details for me was that when asked what they would never eat, a lot of the officials mentioned romaine lettuce and bagged salads. I always used to get romaine salads, but this was the cherry on the cake for what I no longer will try to eat.

These salads might be triple washed when bagged, but the officials mentioned that only if you boil the greens or lettuce will the salmonella go away.

You can wash it all you want, but unless it’s boiled, you’re probably not getting off those bacteria. These outbreaks have been suspiciously common in the US, and while there are some methods to prevent it, proper action is not being taken.

One interview is with a Trump-era and privately funded woman working for the feds, and her answers were also kind of suspicious.

There was also a study done in the documentary on the three major chicken brands. We get a glimpse of the chicken pens to see their conditions, and Perdue tells us about how they implement all of these processes to prevent salmonella among their chickens.

Of the three brands that were checked in the documentary, Perdue ended up having the most positive tests for salmonella. As someone whose mother touts that Perdue is the best and the cleanest, this was horrifying to me.

Overall Thoughts

I’m glad I watched this documentary, but man I was shocked by the contents of it. It reminded me why I should eat more vegetarian, as I don’t agree with the conditions the animals faced when in these kinds of pens, and I don’t like that ground meat is essentially a carcass chucked into a blender.

It makes me really sad, especially considering how much food gets wasted in the United States. Animals are essentially killed for nothing. Anyways, this is such an informative documentary no matter how hard it gets to watch at some points.

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.