Human Footprint

(Fish Scales) Let's begin now.

(Shane) It's the high temple of our food system.

(kids) We're gonna have a good day (Shane) Americans spend 2% of their waking lives within these sacred walls.

The shelves overflow with a bounty of mouthwatering delights.

(food clattering) In packages that dazzle the eye.

(Greg Street) Hairline fresh, new cologne on Feelin' so good, changed the color to my phone (Shane) Whatever you want, you can find it here any day of the year, for a price that you just can't beat.

(mysterious music) For millions of years, our bodies and brains have been shaped by the pursuit of food.

(flames crackling) But for many of us today, avoiding hunger is as simple as filling a cart.

(cash register beeps) Grocery stores might feel like a simple fact of life.

We need to eat, and this is where the food is.

But they're unlike anything in our species' history.

(rewinding sounds) -(classical music) -(cash register beeping) And our choices at the checkout line reverberate around the globe.

(Busta Rhymes) Y'all people had enough?

Gimme some more Y'all people want a wild hit?

Gimme some more Yo, Spliff, where the weed at?

(Shane) The modern supermarket makes abundance accessible.

But how did we get here?

And at what cost?

(mysterious music) This is the Human Footprint of the grocery store.

-(record scratch) -Welcome to the age of humans, where one species can change everything.

And what we do reveals who we truly are.

This is Human Footprint.

(intense music) -(static crackles) -(applause) (lively game show music) (cheering) (David) Hello, and welcome to Omega Mart Sweepstakes.

Lets meet our contestants.

-Hi, Emily.

-Hi.

Tell us how you know Shane.

(Emily) Ive never met him before in my life.

-(audience laughs) -All right.

Uh, Shane, what do you do, sir?

(Shane) Im a professor at Princeton University, and Im super happy to be here.

Now were gonna play the first game, the Mini Sweep.

Heres your clue.

When the dirt is giving you fits, pick up a bottle of... -Emily!

-Cherry Blitz.

-(chime dings) -Cherry Blitz.

Absolutely right.

Now, Shane, you have 20 seconds to find the bottle of Cherry Blitz and bring it back to me.

And...go!

There he is.

Hes moving very fast.

Yep, look at him go.

Yep.

Hurry up.

You got ten seconds, Shane.

Hurry up.

All right.

Almost.

And you got it!

Congratulations, you guys.

And this is David Ruprecht saying, the next time youre at the checkout stand and youve got what it takes, think of all the fun you could have on Omega Mart Sweepstakes!

("Work" by Gang Starr plays) (Shane) Nothing celebrates the miracle of the supermarket better than a gameshow from the 90s, -hosted by this legend.

-(applause) Today, David Ruprecht avoids the limelight and spends his free time on the green.

(Gang Starr) Aiyyo Im gonna be on ti-dop Thats all my eyes can see Victory is mine (Shane) But for folks my age, he needs no introduction.

David is one of TVs all-time greats, beloved as the host of Supermarket Sweep.

Whoevers gonna play first, get your hands on your buzzers and listen carefully.

(Shane) The show tested contestants knowledge of grocery stores.

Theyd answer questions about products and then race to fill their shopping carts.

If they won, theyd earn... (David) $5,000 here on Supermarket Sweep!

(laughs) You just put on so much nostalgia -just now for me.

-(laughs) (David) Everybody goes to the market, everybody has their ideas about what they want.

(mellow music) On our show, you are relating to people, yelling, "No, you idiot, dont go for the--" I do find myself getting unnecessarily emotional during those times.

(drumroll) Supermarket Sweep turned something everyone did into an exciting competition, and people loved it.

The show ran for 13 years, more than 1400 episodes, and dominated the ratings.

(David) We like convenience, we like shiny objects.

(knife slices) And we like having a choice.

In the supermarket, they have a huge selection.

Theyre ridiculously wonderful.

(soft music) (Shane) They are ridiculously wonderful, and Supermarket Sweep celebrated a kind of expertise we often take for granted.

A single grocery store might stock 40,000 products, yet most of us can find what we want in minutes, even in a store weve never visited before.

(eerie music) Today, its hard to imagine America without supermarkets.

Those neatly stocked shelves and glistening vegetables feel like a birthright.

But if you start to peel back the veneer, things get weird fast.

(intense hip-hop music) (Emily) Were just surrounded by weirdness and absurdity all the time, but its, like, so normalized.

("ATLiens" by OutKast plays) (Shane) Meet artist Emily Montoya.

Shes got some eclectic interests.

-(record scratch) -(speaking gibberish) Like pretending to be an alien anthropologist on YouTube.

(Big Boi) Check it.

Well, its the M-I-crooked letter Aint no one better And when Im on the microphone (Shane) Shes also one of the masterminds behind the wildly successful immersive art show Meow Wolf.

(eerie music) Her latest masterpiece is all about the supermarket.

Welcome to Omega Mart.

At first glance, it feels like any other grocery store.

But, like in a real grocery store, look a little closer and nothing is as it seems.

Growing up, I was always just fascinated by being in a grocery store and just this sense of, like, comfort and abundance.

And, like, you can get anything you want.

Its all here.

Getting older, you know, you start to sort of ask questions, its like, "Well, how did all these things get here?"

(eerie music) (Shane) Omega Mart is like Disneyland and Walmart had a baby that spent years in therapy.

Its a psychedelic playground constructed by a team of world-class artists.

(welder zapping) The products on these shelves tell stories about the dystopian truths behind the brands we know and love.

What are your favorite products that are being sold in Omega Mart?

I love Nut-Free Salted Peanuts, which is salt.

Uh-huh.

(Emily) Crystal pepper, which is also salt.

-Okay.

-(chime dings) (Emily) You enter the exhibit as a shopper, and you start to find out where these products are coming from.

(Shane) I wont spoil the story, but many of these products have problematic origins.

(eerie zapping) Omega Marts take on the grocery store feels absurd at first, but, like any good satire, it reveals the uncanny in the familiar.

Its both a celebration and critique of the world we inhabit.

(Emily) Were trying really hard, but, like, real supermarkets are way more bizarre than anything we could even dream up.

It is like a gigantic Pangea-shaped continent that is just filled with milk cartons and oranges and chickens, totally wrapping the world up in this beautiful, terrifying ouroboros of absurdity.

(Shane) Wow.

(laughing) The supermarket gives us every product we want all year long at low prices.

We take it for granted today, but a century ago this miraculous way of shopping was inconceivable.

How did we get there?

I think you really have to go back.

("Brooklyn" by Mos Def plays) (Mos Def) Hey, hey -(traffic whirs) - B-the-R-the-O-the-O-K L-y-n is the place where I stay (Shane) Few people know more about the supermarket or how we shopped before it than journalist Ben Lorr.

At the card table, he plays his hand close to the chest.

But for his best-selling history of the grocery store, he went all in.

(Mos Def) Sometimes I sit back and just reflect Watch the world go by and my thought connect (bell jingling) (Ben) All right, here we are.

-Good morning, sir.

-Hey.

-Hows it going?

-Hey, man.

Hows it going?

(Ben) Uh, were looking for some skirt steak.

(butcher) Skirt steak.

(Shane) We spent the morning sampling Brooklyns delis and butchers.

(mellow music) (Ben) This is, like, really my happy place in the neighborhood.

(Shane) Yeah, this is the sweet spot.

-Its just, like, super chewy.

-Mm.

Wow.

Today, this kind of specialty shopping is a luxury enjoyed by people with plenty of time and money.

But a hundred years ago, everyone shopped like this.

The supermarket, a single store that sold everything you needed, didnt exist.

(Ben) Cheers.

(Shane) Cheers, my friend.

(laughing) Mm.

(Ben) The pre-grocery store was very disaggregated.

You would go to the butcher, you would go to the general store for dry goods, and you would go to the baker.

(Shane) At the turn of the 20th century, you could spend your whole day tackling your grocery list.

But a series of small innovations began to change the way we shop.

(Ben) Canning comes online, glassmaking.

We start using cardboard for packaging.

Now you got these smaller packages and they just kind of call out for a brand.

(projector clicks) This creates a huge shift.

Products have an individual identity and you can play them off each other.

(Shane) These small changes paved the way for something big.

In 1916, a man named Clarence Saunders opened Americas first self-serving store, a Piggly Wiggly in Memphis.

His idea was to cut labor costs by requiring shoppers to select their own goods.

But customers actually preferred this new freedom of choice.

His sales skyrocketed, and competitors took note.

And then, there was this gentleman, Michael Cullen, in 1930.

Basically, he just says, "We can take this setup where people can touch the goods, and we can supersize it."

- I get money, money I got - I get it - I get money, money I got - I run New York (Ben) By kind of both physically blowing up the footprint of the store and also cutting down on staff, what we can do is reduce price and just make up that difference in total profit based on the volume of goods.

And this is-- this is the supermarket.

And it transforms everything.

(soft music) (Shane) When Cullen opened his first store, he simply listed his prices in a four-sheet advertisement.

People couldnt believe their eyes and drove hundreds of miles to see if it was true.

(Ben) The supermarket kind of just takes off from there, and it becomes a game of how much bigger can we make this footprint?

(Shane) As they grew, supermarkets added fresh produce, bakeries, and butchers.

Before long, you could buy everything you needed in one trip.

Today, there are more than a million supermarkets globally.

For many of us, they feel commonplace, but they reveal something profound about what we value.

(Ben) Boil it all down and theres just two messages, loud and clear: convenience and low price.

We care about that more than just about everything.

(mellow music) (Shane) And thats exactly what grocery stores delivered.

As a share of household income, Americans spend almost 70% less on food today than we did in 1947, while enjoying a wider range of products available wherever and whenever we want them.

But creating the supermarkets global seasonless abundance meant reimagining how food was grown, stored, and moved around the world.

(birds chirping) (man) Jokingly, Ill say that Im 68 but this will be my 69th harvest, because when I was a baby, six months old, my folks had me in a box underneath the tree, you know, while they were picking apples.

(Shane) Oh, wow.

Dave Gleason never passes up a chance to hit the trails, unless, of course, he has an opportunity to share his other passion.

Good morning, this is Dave Gleason with another Orchard Update.

(Shane) Dave was named the industrys 2022 Apple Grower of the Year.

(Rakim) Its been a long time I shouldnt have left you without a strong rhyme to step to (Shane) Hes been working with apples for long enough to see trends come and go.

("I Know You Got Soul" by Eric B.

& Rakim plays) (Dave) Like Honeycrisp is a very popular apple.

-Okay.

-And yet, its a very difficult apple to grow.

(Shane) Honeycrisp or otherwise, the average American consumes 25 pounds of apples a year.

(soft music) Most of those apples are grown in Washington, and a third of those are grown right here in the Yakima Valley.

But growing apples is really just the start, because after a few months ripening in the sun, apples start another chapter of their lives.

A colder, darker, and much stranger one.

(Vanilla Ice) Ice, ice, baby ("Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice plays) Vanilla Ice, ice, baby (man) The goal is to, whether youre eating an apple in August or June, July of the following year, to have that same consistent taste and crunch and snap every time you eat that piece of fruit.

(Vanilla Ice) All right, stop, collaborate, and listen - Something -Nic Woodward is the CA operations manager for Superfresh Growers in Yakima.

(Nic) CA stands for controlled atmosphere, and we are standing in a CA room right now.

We have 56 at this facility, another 15 down the road.

My bread and butter is harvest time.

(mellow music) Weve got 50, 60 trucks a day coming every single day for three months straight.

(Shane) This one facility processes more than four million apples per day.

Its like a forklift ballet with exquisite choreography.

But the real magic happens once the humans leave.

(Nic) We use 99% pure liquid nitrogen to purge the oxygen out of the rooms, and we typically hold the fruit at about 1.5% oxygen.

(lively music) Humans and other mammals, animals, four-legged freaks, theyll start to pass out at about 13%, 14% oxygen.

(Shane) But apples do just fine... ...as long as you nail the perfect formula of low oxygen and low temperature.

(Nic) The whole point is to put the fruit asleep as fast as you can without killing it.

So, this room, Red Delicious is being stored at 32.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Honeycrisp, a lot of people store em around 37 to 38.

(birds chirping) (Shane) How much longer will an apple last if I put it under these temperature-controlled, oxygen-controlled conditions?

Some of the selections, under controlled atmosphere, could be stored for a year, even 13, 14 months.

-Oh, wow.

-And still be a good eating apple, you know, not disappointing, not tasting old.

("Work It" by Missy Elliott plays) (Shane) Once they emerge from storage, the apples move to a packing line.

(Missy Elliott) Exclusive.

Come on!

Is it worth it, let me work it I put my thang down, flip it, and reverse it Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i If you got a (Shane) They get washed... ...dried... ...and photographed from every angle.

Computers analyze those photos to identify defects and sort the fruit by size.

An hour or so later, the apples reach the end of the packing line.

Boxed, labelled, and ready to ship around the world.

Its industrial and kind of magical.

And its all designed to give shoppers the product they want wherever and whenever they want it.

(truck engine revving) (woman) I mean, people buying an American apple in June, do you think apples are coming off the tree in June?

Cause theyre not.

("Feel Me Flow" by Naughty by Nature plays) (Shane) Nicola Twilley is an avid birder, always looking for the next species to add to her life list.

Shes also an award-winning journalist whose book Frostbite reveals how refrigeration transformed our food system.

The story starts deep in our species past, as we learn to provision ourselves for hard times.

(Nicola) I like to think of it as, like, interspecies warfare where the bacteria and the fungi are trying to get the food before us, and we have developed this whole array of weaponry.

Smoking and drying.

Turning fruit into jams and jellies.

You can ferment it.

Turn it into cheese.

Cheese is milks bid for immortality.

I never thought about it that way.

Exactly.

Many of the most delicious things we eat are actually the result of humans desperately trying to figure out how to save perishable food.

(Shane) But at the height of the Industrial Revolution, everything changed.

(Nicola) As with so many things in life, we have beer to thank.

(soft music) (Shane) Lager beer has to be brewed cold, and that meant figuring out a way to make cold on demand.

In the 19th century, German inventor Carl von Linde designed the first mechanical refrigerator, which was soon adopted in breweries around the world.

From beer, to meat and dairy, to produce and frozen dinners, artificial cold worked its way from producers to supermarkets and into our homes, creating a cold chain from farm to fork.

(Nicola) Before refrigeration, you dont get supermarkets.

Its that--its that simple.

(Shane) But the rise of the cold chain had unexpected consequences.

(soft, somber music) Fruit and vegetables bred to withstand refrigeration and long-distance transport often sacrifice flavor and nutrition in favor of durability... ...while cold storage itself can also degrade foods nutrients and flavor.

And theres another cost.

(Nicola) The U.S. already has 5.5 billion cubic feet of artificial winter that weve built for our food to live in, and its growing exponentially.

Cooling food uses an enormous amount of energy.

It accounts for 8% of global electricity use already, and it has huge climate change emissions impact.

(Shane) If current trends continue, this artificial winter could be coming for the rest of the world too, with huge consequences for our climate.

(Nicola) If the rest of the world builds a U.S.-style cold chain, one expert said to me, I mean, there wont be a harvest to store in it.

-Wow.

-Ive turned into one of those annoying people who tries to eat seasonally and locally.

And, you know what, you dont actually have to eat the same vegetables all year round.

(soft music) (Shane) Fresh, seasonal produce.

Dried, pickled, and fermented foods that dont need refrigeration.

It all sounds pretty reasonable, not to mention delicious.

But can we really change a system thats so ingrained in us?

(Nicola) When refrigeration was first introduced, people reacted with horror.

But that attitude flipped 180 degrees in the U.S. And so that flip, that tells me we can change, we can change really quickly.

(Shane) Its true, our tastes can change, but will we ever voluntarily choose less convenience?

And, for that matter, is it really our choice to make, or is there something else driving what ends up in our carts, some higher power?

(eerie rumbling) -(soft, mysterious music) -(echoing footsteps) Theres one special aisle of the grocery store.

An aisle unlike any other.

Its siren song echoes through the memories of generations of Americans.

-The taste you can see.

-Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs (whispered voice) Grrreat!

(Shane) You know the one Im talking about.

(majestic music) (choir) Hallelujah (Shane) For a kid, its heaven on earth.

And that kid lives inside every one of us.

-(static) -(soft, quirky music) (male narrator) Sometimes you need a little help from the future to solve lifes problems.

I just cant figure it out.

Wait, dont eat that.

Im you from the future with a PhD and a better sense of style.

(cereal clattering) Low in sugar, high in fiber, packed with protein, all natural, prebiotic, and, most importantly, it tastes dope.

(dramatic music) (sentimental music) (fireworks squealing, popping) -I figured it out.

-Its brilliant.

(male narrator) Part of a complete breakfast for viewers like you.

-(record scratch) -Back to one.

(Shane) God, thats cheesy.

(laughs) (man) Its supposed to be.

(mellow music) (Shane) At first glance, our relationship with the supermarket seems simple.

We need to eat, and we choose the products we want.

But the desires we bring into the store, they dont get there on their own.

(static) And a better sense of style.

American food companies spend $14 billion a year on advertising.

And many of them come here to The Garage for help.

(bright music) (liquid pouring) (indistinct chatter) (man) All right, here we go.

Shooting.

There we go.

All right, trigger.

(Shane) Man.

(man) Aww, look at that.

-Oh, wow.

-Beautiful.

(Shane) I know many scientists that would give their right arm for this setup.

(laughs) ("Oh Boy" by Camron plays) -Just blaze.

-Oh, baby.

(Camron) Oh, baby.

Uh, killa - All the girls see the - Boy - Look at his kicks - Boy - Look at his car - Boy - All I say is - Oh boy (Camron) Look, mami, Im no good, Im so hood Clap at your soldiers sober, then leave after its over - Killa -Steve Giralt is more than a filmmaker.

Hes also an engineer, and his expertise in robotics and slow-motion video have won him a contracts with the biggest food companies in the world.

We all speak the language of food and beverage.

We eat and drink every day.

Did you know, like, you were successful when you really want to eat the thing that youve been shooting all day?

(Shane) That defines success to me, for sure.

-(ice clatters) -(liquid whooshes) (bubbly liquid fizzes) (Shane) Steve isnt just the visuals guy.

He also thinks deeply about how to connect products to memories, emotions, and identity.

(Steve) When you see that commercial, and its done the right way, and they position it to your generation, its not just a food, its also now reminding you of your childhood.

(Shane) It takes an army to tap into that nostalgia.

To bring our cereal commercial to life, we had food stylists, robot mechanics and programmers, engineers rendering digital backgrounds behind me, and those are just the people on set.

(Steve) Brands will actually hire us to do a commercial, theyll actually put it into focus group testing.

Then they might go back and re-edit the commercial, come back to the focus group, get another round of revisions.

How much does it cost to make the average commercial?

(Steve) Id say the average commercial we work on is probably, you know, starting at $100,000 up to a million dollars.

(Shane) Thats a million dollars for a 30-second commercial.

(dramatic flourish) And thats just for production.

-(can cracks open) -(bubbly liquid fizzes) Corporations will spend millions more for ad placement.

They do this because they know marketing works.

-Wait, dont eat that.

-If we do could do a commercial for, lets say, $200,000 that helps them sell, you know, $200 million more of this stuff, you know, at the end of the day, that reward is huge.

The hardest part of it all is the fact that the foods that are not necessarily the best for you are the ones that have the most marketing dollars behind them.

(distant horns blaring) (Shane) Thats not an accident.

(mysterious music) Food companies understand that there are a few basic ingredients we simply cant resist.

(sugar crystals clatter softly) The rise of those ingredients, and the birth of modern marketing, are tied to one food.

...from the future... And you can probably guess which one.

(man) It actually started with cereal.

-(cello strike) -(mellow music) (Shane) Meet Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss.

On the cello, hes just a beginner.

But as an investigative reporter, Michaels a veteran.

And his books on the food industry are New York Times best sellers.

(Michael) At the turn of the century, there was this guy named John Harvey Kellogg.

Physician.

-(soft music) -(boat horn beeps) (Shane) Americans were suffering from an epidemic called dyspepsia, an ailment of bloated, gaseous stomachaches related to their diet.

(Michael) And at one point he came up with this cereal that was devoid of sugar and salt, and it had, like, whole grains.

And all might have been fine, except he had a little brother named Will.

(Shane) Will Kellogg was more interested in making money than his brother was.

And he saw big business in cereal.

-(machinery clanking) -(grains whooshing) (Michael) Dr. Kellogg is, like, off in Europe at some point, and Will--Wills in charge.

"What if we just add, like, one extra element here?

What would that do to sales?"

(sugar crystals clatter softly) And, of course, that element was sugar.

(whooshing sound) Sales went bonkers.

The customers loved it.

Dr. Kellogg came back and was appalled.

They went to court twice over this.

That must be one of the most epic sibling fights in all of modern history.

Well, it was a fight over the health and well-being of, like, gazillions of people.

(mellow music) (Shane) The Kellogg brothers had a rival.

Inspired by their success, a man named C.W.

Post began selling his own sweetened cereals.

(Michael) What Post realized is that the real thing that could set him apart was, like, marketing.

(machinery whirring) (Shane) Post launched some of Americas earliest food marketing campaigns, and it paid off in millions.

(soft music) (Michael) That evolution of cereal epitomized what makes processed food so powerful.

(Shane) As the century unfolded, Americas food companies came of age, investing billions in marketing and food science that tapped into our biological pull toward sugar, salt, and fat.

(mellow music) (Michael) Back in the 70s, a dentist pulled out all his favorite brands of cereal, tested them, and was shocked to find that so many brands of cereal, ostensibly good for us, had, like, more sugar than candy.

(Shane) And these cereals werent just marketed to the adults who bought these foods but directly to the children who ate them.

(Michael) Back in the 70s, somebody did a study.

And they counted up and measured all the advertising that was going on.

(soft music) (Shane) Over a nine-month period during the hours when children most watched TV, there were 3800 ads for sugar cereals, 1600 for candy and gum, and for unsweetened foods like meat, fish, or vegetables, only four.

But proposing new government regulations in the 1980s was a nonstarter.

(Ronald Reagan) We must remove governments smothering hand from where it does harm.

Fellow conservatives, our time is now.

-(static) -Look like mini footballs!

(Shane) Giant corporations kept selling us addictive, unhealthy products with manipulative advertising.

Sweet, colorful, bursting with fruity... (Shane) Sound familiar?

-(lighter strikes) -(cigarette burns) Thats no coincidence.

(Michael) Back in the 80s, the biggest tobacco company in the world, Philip Morris, was rolling in cash.

Guess what they spotted as being a natural extension of their tobacco business?

Processed food.

(Shane) First, they bought food giant General Foods, followed by Kraft, and then Nabisco.

By the early '90s, Philip Morris was the largest producer of food in the world.

And you can see through the documents the tobacco guys lent some of their best marketing strategies to the food guys.

(Shane) Addictive products plus slick marketing, it's a formula for success.

Today, most of the products on grocery store shelves are highly processed.

Meanwhile, a billion people are living with obesity.

And another 2.5 billion are overweight.

That's up more than 40% since 1970.

And research connects this trend and its many health consequences with the ubiquity of processed foods on supermarket shelves.

(Michael) One could argue that those products and our huge dependency on processed food has been one of the biggest manmade disasters, health disasters of our time.

(wind howling) (Shane) When you're taking all this in, where does the responsibility lie?

(mysterious music) (Michael) These products we're talking about are designed, in a way, to kind of destroy our free will.

It's really hard to regain control of that, you know, having a lifetime experience of them telling us what we should love.

(traffic whirs) (Shane) But whether they land in our carts by choice or coercion, the products we scan at the checkout counter are completing the last step in an epic journey through a global supply chain.

(soft, eerie music) Seamless and invisible, that supply chain connects us and the food we eat to places and people around the world.

(energetic music) (mellow music) The journey for one product that weve come to love, and expect, starts here.

(energetic music) (female announcer) For those who have (indistinct), bring them to the level (indistinct).

(Shane) You might know Thailand for its delicious cuisine, but even if you dont love pad kee mao, youve probably tasted this countrys bounty.

(phone rings) -Hello.

-Hey, Ben, its Shane.

Hows it going?

Shane, how you doing?

(Shane) Remember Ben Lorr, the Secret Life of Groceries guy?

Hes written a lot about shrimp and its fascinating road to seafood superstardom... (video game sound effects) ...courtesy of the grocery store.

How popular is shrimp in the U.S.?

(Ben) Oh, its our-- its our number one.

("Livin It Up" by Ja Rule plays) Forget the salmon, tuna.

Shrimp is Americas seafood, and we put it in everything.

(Ja Rule) Come on, baby This aint your typical, every day, one night thing Its a physical, Ima love you tonight thing (Shane) Which is interesting to me because I feel like shrimp used to be a luxury item.

(elegant music) (Ben) Yeah, the silver platter with cocktail shrimp.

It was like the cuisine of the elite because it cost more than steak.

(Shane) Before the 1970s, most shrimp were wild-caught, and the shrimp industry got a reputation for ravaging marine ecosystems.

(Ben) That all shifted in the 70s to 90s, really, this big, long evolution in aquaculture.

(Shane) In other words, shrimp farming.

These farms started small, but they didnt stay that way for long.

(grim music) By the 1990s, Thailand was the worlds top producer of farmed shrimp.

(Ben) Lets make the pools bigger, lets line it with plastic.

You know, like, the classic, like, "Lets ramp it up."

But there was this big problem.

When you did that, you stressed the shrimp out, and the female shrimp refused to breed.

(water flowing) (Shane) Aquaculture might have stalled out if not for a genuinely bizarre observation that cutting off shrimps eyes triggered an unexpected hormonal response, sending the shrimp into a kind of reproductive overdrive.

(energetic music) As production soared, prices fell and demand exploded.

But solving one problem led to another.

(Ben) Whenever you keep animals in a confined environment, you create this perfect recipe for disease.

(soft music) So, all those shrimp that you are packing in there, theyre stewing in their own feces, and that water gets toxic nasty.

(Shane) Before long, Thailand and other shrimp-farming countries were covered in contaminated pools.

(Ben) Youve probably seen these blue-green lagoons everywhere.

-Yeah.

-Those are the ghosts of shrimp farms past.

(Shane) And those ghosts can leach toxins for years afterwards.

But despite the environmental costs, our demand for shrimp kept growing.

(grim music) Thing is, shrimp have to eat too.

(Ben) At the bottom of the aquaculture pyramid is the food that shrimp eat.

Shrimp are fundamentally carnivorous.

It takes two pounds of wild-caught fish to raise one pound of shrimp.

(energetic music) (Shane) Suddenly, there was an insatiable market for what the industry calls "trash fish," marine species that people wont eat.

The fishing industry, once focused only on edible seafood, began pulling everything they could out of the ocean.

(Ben) When a fishing vessel goes out in the Andaman Sea or in Thailand to collect fish, they use something called a benthic trawl.

It just rakes the bottom of the ocean floor, destroys coral and uplifts rocks.

It rips apart that environment.

(Shane) This indiscriminate fishing devastated fisheries close to shore and pushed the fleet further out to sea.

And with demand for cheap shrimp surging, the industry discovered a new way to cut costs.

("Outsider" by Nyck Caution plays) (Shane) Meet Patima Tungpuchayakul.

She finds peace perfecting traditional Thai dishes.

(Nyck Caution) I got my stripes earned, battle tested (Shane) But her true calling is helping people, no matter the risk.

- Check -In the process, she and her group, the Labor Protection Network, have made enemies of some powerful institutions.

So much so that we had to meet in secret.

(somber music) Facing a shortage of local workers willing to spend months at sea, the fleets turned to cheaper and more vulnerable sources of labor.

So, people are being actively recruited and brought in, and then, once theyre there, its a completely different situation than they expected.

(camera shutter bursts) As a Black American, the word slaves brings up a lot of feelings for me.

(camera shutter clicking) But its hard to think of another word to describe this reality.

People tricked into a brutal life, where theyre bought and sold to work long, unpaid hours... ...under constant threat of violence or death.

(indistinct shouting) Many of these migrant workers have nowhere to go, even if they could escape.

(insects chirring) (Shane) In 2014, Patima and a team of journalists tracked ships, found men held in cages, and discovered remote Indonesian islands used as prisons for fishing industry slaves.

Together, they rescued nearly 2,000 people, earning Patima a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Some of the men Patima helped were willing to share their stories.

Fearing for his life, this man jumped off the boat.

(water splashes) But his captors caught him and tied him to the deck for seven days.

He was tied for so long that his arm had to be amputated.

(camera shutter clicking) Against his will, this man was put to work in Indonesia.

He was beaten mercilessly and witnessed many of his shipmates, his friends, killed and thrown overboard for misconduct.

He worked under these conditions for years, fearing for his life if he tried to escape.

Are we talking about hundreds of workers, thousands of workers?

In the last decade, Thailand has made progress toward better regulating its fishing industry, but human rights abuses continue, especially in countries with less oversight.

In the fishing industry that feeds the shrimp, its just the tip of the iceberg.

(hip-hop music) Working conditions can also be horrific on shrimp farms and in peeling, packing, and shipping facilities.

The companies we visited were proud to show off their operations.

But most farms and packing plants wont let outsiders with cameras anywhere near.

Once the shrimp are packed and shipped, many of them destined for U.S. grocery stores, the stories of the workers disappear, erased in the uniformity of a commodity.

(Ben) How it was produced, who produced it, the conditions by which they made it.

All of those are vanished.

(Shane) And the scale of whats vanished, its enormous.

(grim music) What percentage of the shrimping industry do you think is dependent upon the sort of forced labor?

(Ben) I mean, the numbers are crazy, 15% to 65%.

(dramatic musical flourish) (Shane) Thats a huge range.

(Ben) And I think it really spoke to the lack of visibility in the supply chain.

(Shane) Is this a story that is specific to the shrimp industry?

Oh, I think its an example of something much bigger.

(soft music) This NGO, Humanity United, did kind of an audit of various supply chains.

(Shane) They found similar abuses in dozens of supply chains.

Commodities like coffee, cattle, cotton, timber, palm oil, sugar.

(Ben) All of those are as problematic as shrimp.

All of these costs are out of your control, and labors the one place where you can make these cuts.

(Shane) The value youre talking about, like, the value of these workers comes from the ability to devalue them.

Correct.

Wow.

Today, an estimated 35 million people are enslaved.

And millions of others live and work in abysmal conditions, many of them toiling away to keep grocery store shelves stocked with affordable products.

(Ben) Someone at checkout negotiating for a lower price.

The importer negotiating for a lower price.

(eerie static) All these requests for a lower price echoing through the supply chain, down, down, down.

The bottom of the supply chain is where all of that pressure has been compounded.

It takes on these ruthless, horrific attributes.

(Shane) So, it sounds like what youre saying-- I mean, this part of the human footprint is the sort of boot on the neck.

Yes, and its-- its the boot on the neck, but its, like, the leg is three kilometers long, so you cant even see the boot thats crushing, and nobody wants to see it.

(soft, mysterious music) (Shane) As someone whos allergic to shrimp, its easy to think that its not my boot on anyones neck.

(sizzling) But, like Ben said, this isnt just a shrimp problem.

(raw meat squelching) The grocery store is the nexus of our food system, its the place that should connect us to how our food is made, but, instead, it insulates us from it.

(cart wheel rattles) (phone ringing) (man) The food business is very good at getting someone else to pick up their tab.

("I Can" by Nas plays) (Shane) For Raj Patel, fine art is a way to reimagine what the world can be, and, as hes chronicled in his best-selling books, nothing needs reimagining more than our food system.

(Nas) Save the music, yall.

(Shane) To Raj, the injustice of the shrimp industry is just a symptom of a far bigger problem, one thats born in the grocery store.

(Raj) The supermarkets act as gatekeepers.

They hold a specific kind of position in the bottleneck of the food system, where we have, you know, hundreds of millions of farmers, billions of consumers, just a few companies in the middle.

(liquid splashing) There may be a green aisle in your supermarket, and youll go and youll see all these labels.

And youll be like, "Oh, God, do I want local?

Do I want, like, organic?

Do I want fair trade?

Do I want dolphin-free?

Do I want with dolphin?

I dont underst-- I give up!"

And in this moment you are being broken by the individuating power of the supermarket.

(mysterious music) (Shane) Grocery stores basically ask us to vote with our wallets for the world we want to live in.

And, in doing so, they shift the responsibility away from billion-dollar corporations and onto individual shoppers, each of us doing our best to make good decisions but in a system that obscures the consequences of our choices.

(Raj) You shouldnt have to choose dolphin or not, slavery or not.

We shouldnt have slavery in our food system.

Why are you being asked to make the choice?

Its not fair.

(soft music) (Shane) Its unfair, in part, because supermarkets dont exist to educate us.

-(whooshing sound) -(bubbly drink fizzes) They exist to sell product.

(Raj) They would be remiss to their shelves if they werent trying to maximize profits, so thats what they do.

Theyre there to cultivate not, you know, -free choice but impulse.

-(woman gasps) An impulse is the opposite of a reasonable choice.

(Shane) So, how can we free ourselves from the false choices on the shelves and build a real alternative?

(Raj) All of these things dont happen from you going into the supermarket, but from you being part of community and getting engaged in political action.

And thats the one thing the supermarkets are most scared of.

Theyre really terrified of collective action, because the thing that works best for them is little individuals and not big collective power.

(mellow music) (Shane) Collective power often begins in communities that the system has left behind.

("Full Clip" by Gang Starr plays) (DJ Premier) Do you wanna mess with this (man) Literally, a couple years ago, this was considered a food desert, so, being able to bring fresh and accessible produce, vegetables, higher-end meats, is a game-changer.

(Guru) Fresh out the gate again Trying to raise the stakes again Fatten my plate again, yall cats know (Shane) Akil Talley has spent his whole career around food.

From commercial kitchens, to high-end grocery stores, to his latest job as general manager of the Detroit Peoples Food Co-op.

(record scratch) When the auto industry collapsed, more than half of Detroits supermarkets closed their doors, creating food deserts in parts of the city that still persist today.

So, food sovereignty, a kind of community level self-sufficiency, is at the heart of this co-ops mission.

(mellow music) The co-ops member-owners decide what to carry and work with growers and producers in Detroit and across Michigan to stock a wide range of local products.

(Akil) Im a huge, huge veggie guy, and my favorite thing right now is our D-Town local collards and the Swiss chard.

Super fresh, super nutrient-dense.

(Shane) Not only are you buying something delicious, but youre also buying into the connections that youve made sort of all in one.

(Akil) Yep.

Circulating that dollar back into the community.

(Shane) Does it feel different, you know, knowing that the food came from here?

Yes, 100%.

I feel like Im putting in some kind of groundwork for what the future will look like for grocery stores.

(woman) The more people we have involved in the process, the greater power we take back from the corporations that have made the process a machine.

(Shane) Meet Shakara Tyler, farmer, activist, scholar, and board member of the Food Co-op.

-(baby giggles) -For Shakara, creating a better food system means bringing the community together.

(Shakara) Thats how were gonna beat capitalism at its own game, because capitalism wants us to think that we have to be individuals to succeed.

And so were resisting that in every way that we can by fostering a sense of community.

(Shane) By forging relationships between food growers and consumers, the co-op celebrates the supply chain instead of hiding it.

Its still a recognizable grocery store, but its one that doesnt sacrifice its values at the altars of cost and convenience.

(Shakara) The only way were gonna liberate ourselves is if we have greater power in the systems that control our lives, and food is at the core of that.

(Shane) So, should we liberate ourselves from the grocery store?

Can we?

I think one of the primary drivers of contemporary human culture is convenience.

We want things, we want a lot of different kinds of things, and we want them right now.

Instant oatmeal.

Instant abs.

Instant absolutely everything.

And the supermarket is an instant gratification machine, so its hard to quit.

The funny thing about people is, like, you know, everybody wants things to change as long as they dont have to do anything different.

(bright music) The co-op isnt a silver bullet, but it is an earnest attempt at a much-needed solution, and folks are out here making sacrifices to create change.

The fact that some people are taking back a power that weve sort of given away, I think its a beautiful thing.

(rumbling) From the first self-serving stores to modern big-box mega marts... ...supermarkets have trained us to believe that we can have it all.

Whatever we want where and when we want it.

I know Ive internalized that lesson.

But after everything Ive seen, I think its one I need to unlearn.

Because the convenience we crave comes at a cost we dont see at the checkout.

So, can we channel the ingenuity, the entrepreneurial spirit, the miraculous technology thats gotten us where we are, and use those very same talents to re-envision the systems that bring food to the dinner table?

Its not going to be easy, but I think we can, and we must.

Because the well-being of our bodies, our society, and the planet we live on depends on it.

(hip-hop music) (woman) This program is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.