Did you go to the supermarket yesterday? What about today? Did you buy carrots? Corn? What about strawberries? Or meat?

Did you know that the bite of grilled steak you’re enjoying tonight has the power to change a corn farmer’s life in Iowa? A pork industry employee’s work conditions in North Carolina?

Did you know that bite has the power to change everyone’s life?

After seeing Food, Inc., a compelling new documentary opening in Atlanta on June 19, you’ll know. The film, from director Robert Kenner, takes a hard — and ultimately alarming — look at what’s for dinner, and serves up a plate of reality some Americans will find hard to stomach.

The truth is, we all need to start swallowing — hard. The foods we eat are the stones dropped in a pond — and each wave ripples far beyond its origins.

The film’s tagline is “You’ll never look at dinner the same way again,” and you won’t. I’m a pretty seasoned food writer who’s been at this for close to 15 years — in other words, Kenner et al is basically preaching to the choir when it comes to me — and this film scared the heck out of me. It made me really angry. It made me very sad. And it inspired me.

The film offers provocative interviews from foodie phenoms such as Michael Pollan (who wrote the new foodie bible, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) and Eric Schlosser (who wrote “Fast Food Nation”), as well as moving retellings from food safety advocate and mom Barbara Kowalcyk, whose son Kevin died in 2001 twelve days after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7. (A strain of the deadly bacteria that, according to Pollan in the film, was basically accidentally engineered by our industrialized food system and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) due to the tainted conditions these huge operations employ.)

The food industry’s answer, as conveyed in the film, is to treat our ground beef with ammonia, a construct devised by huge industries such as BPI (Beef Products, Inc.) at a large profit. It is, as farmer Joel Salatin remarks in the film, our way of “hitting the bull’s eye of the wrong target.” God forbid we should change the way we farm. Or change the way we process beef. And let’s face it — those tasks seem overwhelmingly monumental.

But as Gary Hirshberg (who I remember meeting years ago at a Chefs’ Table Conference in Hyde Park, New York, when his organic dairy, Stonyfield, was barely a gleam in his eye), sweetly points out: People think they have no power and that these big corporations hold all the cards. “They couldn’t be more wrong,” Hirshberg says. “Consumers have all the power.”

A fact noted — and proven — by Wal-Mart’s choice (in 2006) to include organic groceries and products on its super shelves. Why did it go green (at least in part)? Because we told it to. We told Walmart with our wallets.

Second only to Kowalcyk’s heart-wrenching retelling of her son’s death is the haunting story of a family that chooses each week to spend its grocery dollars on chips instead of broccoli because — at $1.29 a pound — the latter is just too expensive. And don’t blame cost on organics: It’s big industry farming that costs us so much, not only environmentally, but economically. The nectarine I had for lunch today traveled over 1,500 miles to get to me. As the film so dramatically illustrates, our current method of CAFO use in cattle farming uses 75 gallons of oil for one steer to get to slaughter. Where’s the savings in that? From corn farmers and government subsidies to the FDA and USDA, Food, Inc., takes a look at the literal underbelly of our food system, and it’s not a pretty sight.

I know what you’re thinking as you sip your organically grown, fair trade coffee sweetened with Splenda and seasoned with a drop or two of fat-free coffee cream. These foodies like Ford Goldman. What a bunch of old hippies — even if we could change industrialized farming, why should we? It’s easier just to keep things the way they are. How can we feed the world without industrialized farming?

If that’s you — and even if it isn’t — I implore you to see this film. I beg you to see this film. As the credits roll, Bruce Springsteen’s awesome, immediately recognizable voice croons Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

It is your land. And it is mine. It’s time to take it back. Get involved. Start a revolution. We can create change — one table at a time.

It should be noted that the film contains a few disturbing scenes involving animals in processing plants that might not be suitable for some. Food, Inc., opens June 19 at Atlanta’s Landmark Midtown. Rated PG, 90 minutes running time.

This Saturday, June 13, Whole Foods celebrates the film’s release with panel discussions, games, food and more from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Whole Foods Midtown, 650 Ponce de Leon, Atlanta.