The True Crime Netflix Documentary Rotten Will Make You Want to Stop Eating Food
Food: you have to eat the stuff, but that doesn’t mean you want to know how the sausage is made. You also don’t want to know how the sausage industry is controlled by greedy cost-cutting multinational corporations with “allegations of forced prison labor.” But you should know about the meals you are eating. Which means you should watch Rotten, a new Netflix documentary series about the crimes, frauds, and horrors of the food in your fridge.
Rotten is a six-part documentary series that is a hybrid of activist documentary and true crime series. The six episodes each cover a different part of the industry including peanuts, fish, and milk. Each episode splits its time between overall facts about the industry and investigations of individual crimes. You’ll learn that the honey you squirt in your tea is adulterated with cheap syrup and that people are three times as likely to be hospitalized for food allergies now as they were 20 years ago. And you’ll get investigations of crimes ranging from raw milk food poisoning to global garlic conspiracies.
If you’ve ever had a vegan friend, you’ve probably already heard plenty about the horrors of industrial meat production. Rotten does cover those, but also looks at pantry products you might never think about, such as honey and garlic. The “Garlic Breath” episode in particular has the most engaging true crime case, investigating a complex series of lawsuits involving different groups of Chinese and American garlic farmers along with allegations of garlic-peeling prison labor. It also has the most engaging talking heads, including experimental fiction writer turned garlic farmer Stanley Crawford (whose 1972 novel The Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine has nothing to do with garlic but is truly excellent!).
The episodes also make you think about the vast network of global food production, and how little changes can have dramatic effects. Did you ever think about how Russia’s invasion of Crimea caused dramatic damage to the American dairy farmers by causing a flood of cheap Latvian butter into the United States after Russia imposed retaliatory tariffs on European dairy production? Well, after watching Rotten you will.
The suffering of local farmers at the hands of forces beyond their control is a theme of most episodes. But to Rotten’s credit it doesn’t merely portray as aw-shucks good guys, especially not when you watch farmers defend their illegal selling of potentially dangerous “raw milk” with “I’m not dealing cocaine.”
Truth be told, this is not this is not the best documentary you’ll ever watch. Some episodes are dragged by dull talking heads, and the music and over-the-top narration can be a bit much (the dilution of honey in stories is described as “straight out of the drug dealer playbook!”). Still, Rotten is worth watching because it exposes corruption and questionable-practices from the farm to the dining room table. The overall message: cost-cutting corporate food production causes countless problems, and if there is a solution it lies in sustainable organic farming that can “minimize cruelty, but still generate profits.” Watching Rotten might make your stomach churn, but it might also prompt you to help make a healthier world.
