Food, Inc. opened on two screens in San Diego on June 19 – the Landmark-Hillcrest and the UltraStar-Flower Hill.

If what Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and others interviewed in the documentary are telling us is true about the giants running the food industry, consumers should be thinking a lot more about what they buy to eat. Director, Robert Kenner will be on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, today Thursday, July 2.

Here is the “skinny” on some of the major statements in the film:

• The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the last 10,000 years

• One out of three children born today will get early onset diabetes in their lifetimes (one out of two for minority children) Children never used to get “adult onset” or type II diabetes. This is a fairly recent phenomenon.

• About 90 percent of the average 47,000 products on the shelves of any given supermarket include some component of corn and/or soy. Science has re-configured corn and put it into everything from charcoal to batteries to analgesics to soft drinks.

• Chickens are now mostly grown on “factory farms” and never see the light of day. They are given bio-chemicals to grow more breast meat and are full grown in about one-third the time.

• Cattle are supposed to graze on grass on a range, but are instead penned up standing in their own manure and fed corn. They now grow fatter faster (You know how that high fructose corn syrup expands human waistlines? It works on cows, too.)

• Consumers did help end the use of growth hormone in cattle that was leeching into store-bought milk.

• 73,000 Americans a year suffer from E. coli food contamination, and we are still using antibiotics in animals we eat. The film relates the story of a 2-year-old boy who died from E. coli after eating a hamburger. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of cases is likely more, since many do not seek medical care and many cases are not tested for E. coli. While the food supply in the United States is one of the safest in the world, the CDC estimates that nationally 76 million people get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illness. www.cdc.gov

• In the 1970s, the top five beef packers controlled about 25 percent of the market. Today, the top four control more than 80 percent.

• In the 1970s, there were thousands of slaughterhouses producing the majority of beef sold. Today, we have only 13.

• In 1998, the USDA implemented microbial testing for salmonella and E. coli 0157h7, so that if a plant repeatedly failed these tests, the USDA could shut it down. After being taken to court by the meat and poultry associations, the USDA no longer has that power.

• In 1972, the FDA conducted 50,000 food safety inspections. In 2006, the FDA conducted only 9,164.

• During the Bush administration, the head of the FDA was the former executive VP of the National Food Processors Association.

• During the Bush administration, the chief of staff at the USDA was the former chief lobbyist for the beef industry in Washington.

• Prior to renaming itself an agribusiness company, Monsanto was a chemical company that produced, among other things, DDT and Agent Orange.

• In 1996 when it introduced Round-Up Ready Soybeans, Monsanto controlled only two percent of the U.S. soybean market. Now, more than 90 percent of soybeans in the U.S. contain Monsanto’s patented gene.

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was an attorney at Monsanto from 1976 to 1979. After his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in a case that helped Monsanto enforce its seed patents.

• The average chicken farmer invests more than $500,000 and makes only $18,000 a year (“chickenfeed,” as I overheard one moviegoer quip).

• Thirty-two thousand hogs a day are killed in Smithfield Hog Processing Plant in Tar Heel, N.C., which is the largest slaughterhouse in the world.

• The average American eats more than 200 pounds of meat a year.

Monsanto and the others in the food chain declined to be interviewed for the film.

Check out the Web site for information and some action items or solutions at www.FoodIncMovie.com.