The Corn in Your Cupboard

I just watched a movie entitled King Corn. It's a documentary made by two guys who, after graduating from college, lease one acre of farmland in Iowa and raise 180 bushels of corn. They find where the crop goes, what it's made into, how it's used and consumed. Why would they do that? Well, they had their hair tested and found that the carbon in their body was made from corn. CORN? Yep. How did that happen? That's the story.

What they learned was that the corn grown on their land, and all the other land around them, was not used to directly feed people. It was used to feed cattle, make high fructose corn syrup, shipped overseas for feed, and other non-consumption purposes, including ethanol. Okay. So it feeds cattle we eat. That's good, right? Not for the cattle.

Cattle that are "grain fed" (which means corn fed) are raised in feedlots, confined spaces where the cattle can't move around. This way, instead of taking years to grow to market-size, the cattle can be slaughtered in less than six months. Which is a good thing for the cattle, since the corn-based diet would kill them from acidosis in slightly more than six months anyway. Evidently cattle were not intended to eat massive amounts of grain and can't properly digest it and use it. So after a few months on this type of diet, they become too acidic and die.

Cattle raised in feedlots don't have high muscle mass, as they don't really even get to walk around, much less "roam the prairies" like we see in movies and commercials. So the fat-to-muscle ratio in their meat is much higher, sometimes up to 65% fat. This is the meat that is sold to our fast food chains and consumed by so many of us. No wonder it tastes good and is so cheap. And, no wonder the US has an obesity epidemic.

So, why do I want you to know this? I believe that people need to be able to make informed decisions about what we eat and the impact our choices may be making on our health. For example, we all know that fast food is not good for us, is full of excessive, empty calories and can make us fat. But did you know that everything in your "value meal" of burger, fries and soda contains corn? The meat was grown by corn products; the bun contains corn syrup as does the soda; the fries were probably fried in corn oil. It's Iowa-in-a-bag.

Look at most of the items in your cupboards or pantry. Read the labels. Corn starch and high fructose corn syrup or just plain corn syrup are in almost everything we buy and eat. Our cupboards house items that weren't even thought of 40 years ago. And the items that were around then have been "improved" so much that they are barely recognizable. And all this is considered progress.

I was wondering just the other day about the significant increase in obesity and diabetes in our society and why these and several other health issues are so much more prevalent than the were in the 1950's and 1960's. Well, I may have found some of the answer to that question by reading food labels.

My challenge to you: Look at the labels and read the ingredients of the food in your pantry and cupboards. Let's don't change any habits right now; simply read the ingredients and become informed.

More to do later.