Will ‘Food, Inc.’ Actually Change Your Life?
Sure, they’re entertaining, and sometimes thought-provoking, but can watching a movie really change someone’s behavior? In the case of Food, Inc., turns out the answer is yes.
In a presentation at last fall’s Tedx conference in Phoenix, Johanna Blakley of The Norman Lear Center explained what the non-profit research group discovered about people who had seen the film. Turns out, Food, Inc. viewers changed their behaviors in two pretty big ways: They reported being more likely to eat healthy food, and were also more likely to shop at their local farmers market.
To dig out this data, Blakley and her team surveyed almost 20,000 users at TakePart, seeding the survey with questions that allowed researchers find two groups that were nearly identical except for one thing: One had seen Food, Inc., one had not.
“In classic, clinical trials, researchers assign people randomly to one group that is exposed and one group that isn’t exposed,” Blakley said in an interview. “But with media content, it’s very hard to do this.” So they used an innovative method: “We basically retroactively compose a random control group and an exposed group from our sample, and then we compare very similar people in each group to see whether there are differences between them due to exposure to the film.”
The technique gave them clear results. The group who had seen the film said they were more likely to shop at a farmer’s market and eat healthy food. “These two behavior changes are huge,” Blakley told her TEDx audience. “These are major things in your life. Where you shop, where you spend money on food, what kind of food you buy? Those have a huge impact, and we can trace it right back to the film.”
And if you felt compelled to action by the film, you’re not alone. Over half of Food, Inc. viewers reported, “This film changed my life.”
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