When I started writing about 11 best food documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015, I was very excited. Because, let face it, most of us enjoy eating and food. I thought it would be all about famous chefs and their recipes and I was really looking forward to it.
However, as my research went along, I was getting more depressed. While there are few flicks in the list about restaurants and meal preparation, the vast majority of best food documentaries on Netflix is about the agriculture and the part of the food chain we don’t often get to see. It is about the food before it reaches the supermarket shelves and let me tell you, it isn’t pleasant. In fact, most of it is downright disgusting and honestly terrifying. If ever was a topic completely unsuitable for Netflix and chill, this is it. Well, there are best serial killers documentaries as well, but I’ve been told that some people may actually enjoy Netflix and chill while watching those.
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To rank 11 best food documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015, we had to devise a system. Going simply by IMDb rating just wouldn’t cut it, although we did include it in our final ranking. We also scoured dozen of lists on most popular sites in order to get an accurate feel on public opinion. We mixed it all together and came up with a genuine Insider Monkey ranking. If you want to know more about the impact modern agriculture has on our planet, you should check out some of the best environmental documentaries on Netflix.
11. King Corn
Site rank 3, IMDb rank 5, Overall Rank = 8
Directed by Aaron Woolf
Year: 2007
Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis are best friends who decide to move to Iowa from Boston and grow corn in an effort to trace the food we eat back from our tables to its origins. The film explores how the government subsidies have transformed a traditional American family farm into a vast industrial complex that churns out more than 40% of world’s annual corn production. With some help from their neighbors and genetically engineered seeds, they managed to harvest corn from their one-acre plot and discover some unpleasant truths about what happens to it once it leaves the farm and enters the processing plants.
10. Frankensteer
Site rank 6, IMDb rank 2, Overall Rank = 8
Directed by Marrin Canell, Ted Remerowski
Year: 2005
The food we eat has never been cheaper in history. Frankensteer explains why that is and what the real price is. Modern agricultural corporations have transformed an ordinary cow into the ultimate food production machine by filling it to the brim with antibiotics and growth hormones. In their pursuit of profits never once have they stopped and looked around at the world they created and the consequences we all are going to have to pay.
9. Food Chains
Site rank 4, IMDb rank 4 Overall Rank = 8
Directed by Sanjay Rawal
Year: 2014
Produced by Eva Longoria and narrated by Forest Whitaker, Food Chains explores the treatment of agricultural workers in America. The film follows the struggle of migrant workers in Immokalee, Florida against the food corporation and their effort to raise the price of tomatoes they pick by one penny per pound. The condition in which these workers live and work, often described as modern-day slavery, warrant much bigger raise than that, but still it took some drastic measures, like a hunger strike, to get Pubix, the corporation in question, to even agree to talk to them. If nothing else, after watching the film, next time you buy groceries in a supermarket you’ll spend a moment to reflect on the people who picked it for you.
8. The Real Dirt on Farmer John
Site rank 1, IMDb rank 8 Overall Rank = 9
Directed by Taggart Siegel
Year: 2005
When an eccentric farmer from rural Illinois decides to break with a farming tradition his neighbors have been upholding for as long as they can remember, they react violently. But despite the stigma, the scorn, and even arson, John Peterson is determined to make his dream, the first organic farm in the Midwestern, a reality. Today Angelic Organics is the largest community-supported agriculture farm in the United States and its membership consists of some 1,400 families. But the road to success was grim and Peterson faced opposition on almost every step. The movie received 31 awards on various film festivals around the world.
7. Kings of Pastry
Site rank 7, IMDb rank 3 Overall Rank = 10
Directed by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker
Year: 2009
Described as the “culinary Hurt Locker”, Kings of Pastry shows us what it takes to win much coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France, the most prestigious award a pastry chef can receive. The title, presented by the French president, gives the winner the right to wear a French tricolored collar on their chefs’ uniform. A fact that one can go to jail if caught wearing it without having actually won the Meilleur Ouvrier illustrates the fact how seriously the whole affair is taken in France. If you have never seen grown men cry over ruined cake, this film will provide you with plenty of opportunities.
6. The Future of Food
Site rank 2, IMDb rank 9 Overall Rank = 11
Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia
Year: 2004
How safe is the food we are eating? The Future of Food deals with the pitfalls of genetically modified food we buy every day in our supermarkets. Although the movie is pretty one-sided, it manages to reveal the practices of major agricultural corporations like Monsanto when dealing with the safety of their products. The now infamous lawsuits brought against farmers and lack of regulation when it comes to labeling GM food are also mentioned in the film. It won awards at the Women Film Critics Circle and Ashland Independent Film Festival. It’s high IMDb score secured it the 5th place on our list of 11 best food documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015.
5. Fresh
Site rank 5, IMDb rank 6 Overall Rank = 11
Directed by Ana Sofia Joanes
Year: 2009
In the age of chemical agriculture, genetically modified crops, and cattle pumped with growth hormones, Fresh directed by Ana Sofia Joanes tries to show us that there’s another way of growing our food. The way we are doing it now is simply not sustainable in the long run and the real price we will have to pay for our cheap food is looming in not so distant future. The time to turn the things around is now before we are presented with the check we can’t afford to pay.
4. Food Matters
Site rank 5, IMDb rank 8 Overall Rank = 13
Directed by James Colquhoun, Carlo Ledesma
Year: 2008
One of the most striking quotes from this film says that one-quarter of what you eat keeps you alive. The other three-quarters keep your doctor alive. What exactly is the connection between big pharmaceutical companies and food production? How does the modern highly processed, nutrient-deficient food we eat affects our health and the profit margins of Big Pharma? All of these answers and much more can be found in Food Matters. Just to give you a hint, healthy people don’t buy drugs, and if you don’t buy drugs, Big Pharma doesn’t have much use of you.
3. Food Fight
Site rank 8, IMDb rank 7 Overall Rank = 15
Directed by Chris Taylor
Year: 2008
Food Fight takes us back to 1960s and explains the roots of the local organic food movement. It explains the necessity of creating a food chain that isn’t being controlled by large corporations, unless we want to face the future where all of our food production is being owned by few companies focused on profit, rather than our health. It is incredible that a movement so big was grown out of people’s desire for tasty home grown vegetables.
2. Food, Inc.
Site rank 11, IMDb rank 10 Overall Rank = 21
Directed by Robert Kenner
Year: 2007
Robert Kenner’s film shows us the inside workings of modern corporate agribusiness and the ways it has changed not just the food we eat but the way we eat it. In the last 50 years, agriculture has changed more than in the previous 10,000 years and not all the changes were good for us as consumers. Despite the fact that their marketing departments are trying to hide behind the image of American family farmers in order to sell us the notion that nothing has changed, the ugly truth is that our food doesn’t come from a farm, but rather a factory in which not only animals but workers as well are being abused.
1. Chef’s Table
Site rank 10, IMDb rank 11 Overall Rank = 21
Directed by Clay Jeter, Brian McGinn, Andrew Fried and David Gelb
Year: 2015
Chef’s Table is a Netflix series released in April 2015. Its popularity secured it the top position on our 11 best food documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015 list. The series focuses on some of the best chefs in the world and each episode presents one of them and their restaurants. From New York City and Los Angeles, through Buenos Aires and Melbourne, to Modena and Järpen (small Swedish municipality 500 miles north of Stockholm), we get a glimpse of their world and see what it takes to be among the top international chefs on the planet.
