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Do you think that Corn economic properties are enough

to justify the seemingly negative health effects it has?

Why is the food industry able to use corn so much if it

is apparently having a negative effect on the general

populations health?

Are the people in charge of making the how our food is

made aware of the negative effect they are having?

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-Michael Pollen

-Troy Roush

-Larry Johnson

-Allen Trinkle

-CAFO

-High Fructose Corn Syrup

-Starch

-E-coli

-Gluten

-Maltodextrin

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Over eating corn is what is making America fat

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Over eating corn is what is making America fat

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If you are what you eat, and especially if you eat industrial food, as 99 percent of Americans do, what you are is "corn."

During the last year I've been following a bushel of corn through the industrial food system. What I keep finding in case after case, if you follow the food back to the farm - if you follow the nutrients, if you follow the carbon - you end up in a corn field in Iowa, over and over and over again.

Take a typical fast food meal. Corn is the sweetener in the soda. It's in the corn-fed beef Big Mac patty, and in the high-fructose syrup in the bun, and in the secret sauce. Slim Jims are full of corn syrup, dextrose, cornstarch, and a great many additives. The "four different fuels" in a Lunchables meal, are all essentially corn-based. The chicken nugget-including feed for the chicken, fillers, binders, coating, and dipping sauce-is all corn. The french fries are made from potatoes, but odds are they're fried in corn oil, the source of 50 percent of their calories. Even the salads at McDonald's are full of high-fructose corn syrup and thickeners made from corn.

Corn is the keystone species of the industrial food system, along with its sidekick, soybeans, with which it shares a rotation on most of the farms in the Midwest. I'm really talking about cheap corn - overproduced, subsidized, industrial corn - the biggest legal cash crop in America. Eighty million acres - an area twice the size of New York State - is blanketed by a vast corn monoculture like a second great American lawn.

I believe very strongly that our overproduction of cheap grain in general, and corn in particular, has a lot to do with the fact that three-fifths of Americans are now overweight. The obesity crisis is complicated in some ways, but it's very simple in another way. Basically, Americans are on average eating 200 more calories a day than they were in the 1970s. If you do that and don't get correspondingly more exercise, you're going to get a lot fatter. Many demographers are predicting that this is the first generation of Americans whose life span may be shorter than their parents'. The reason for that is obesity, essentially, and diabetes specifically.

Where do those calories come from? Except for seafood, all our calories come from the farm. Compared with the mid-to-late 1970s, American farms are producing 500 more calories of food a day per American. We're managing to pack away 200 of them, which is pretty heroic on our part. A lot of the rest is being dumped overseas, or wasted, or burned in our cars. (That's really how we're trying to get rid of it now: in ethanol. The problem is that it takes almost as much, or even more, energy to make a gallon of ethanol than you get from that ethanol. People think it's a very green fuel, but the process for making it is not green at all.)

Overproduction sooner or later leads to overconsumption, because we're very good at figuring out how to turn surpluses into inexpensive, portable new products. Our cheap, value-added, portable corn commodity is corn sweetener, specifically high-fructose corn syrup. But we also dispose of overproduction in corn-fed beef, pork, and chicken. And now we're even teaching salmon to eat corn, because there's so much of it to get rid of.

There is a powerful industrial logic at work here, the logic of processing. We discovered that corn is this big, fat packet of starch that can be broken down into almost any basic organic molecules and reassembled as sweeteners and many other food additives. Of the 37 ingredients in chicken nuggets, something like 30 are made, directly or indirectly, from corn.

Now, how do you get people to eat so much of this reengineered surplus corn? That took the ingenuity of American marketing. One example is supersizing. When I was a kid, Coke came in these lovely little eight-ounce glass containers. Today, a 20-ounce container is the standard size for soda. The idea that you could sell soda that way was an invention. It has a history, and you can find the individual responsible, an ingenious movie theater manager named David Wallerstein, who invented the idea of supersizing and sold it to Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's.

Before you go out and sue McDonald's over the size of your waistline, consider that overproduction of cheap corn is government policy. It's done in the name of the public interest, using our taxpayer dollars. American taxpayers subsidize every bushel of industrial corn produced in this country, at a cost of some four billion dollars a year (out of a total of 19 billion dollars in direct payments to farmers).

But before you blame subsidies for all these problems keep in mind that agricultural overproduction is an ancient problem that long predates subsidies. In any other business, when the price of the commodity you're selling falls, the smart thing to do is to curtail production until demand raises prices. But farmers don't do that, because there are so many of them, and because they all operate as individuals, without any coordination. So when prices fall farmers actually expand production, in order to keep their cash flow from falling. This economically and environmentally disastrous phenomenon has resulted in an increase in the American corn harvest from four billion to ten billion bushels since the 1970s.

How do we begin to change this system? First, we all need to begin to pay attention to the Farm Bill, working to develop farm programs that allow farmers to stay in business without falling into the trap of overproduction. Most city people don't realize the stake they have in it. They assume it's a parochial concern of members of Congress from farm states, but it's not. If it were called the Food Bill, I think we would all pay a lot more attention to it, and get a saner result. The Farm Bill sets out the rules of the game that everyone is playing in, whether you're an industrial or an organic farmer, whether you're eating industrially or not.

The other thing we can do is become responsible consumers. I've never liked the word "consumer." It sounds like a character who's using up the world, rather than creating anything. I was at a gathering in Italy last October where Carlos Petrini, the founder and president of Slow Food International, offered a wonderful redefinition of the word. He called the consumer a "cocreator." I think that's exactly right, and we've seen why: with the organic movement, consumers and farmers have shown how they can work together as cocreators of an alternative food system. We need to join together now, to recruit a larger and larger army of cocreators, to rewrite the rules of the game - and "cocreate" a different kind of food system.

This essay is excerpted from an article that originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine. It is reprinted with permission from the author, a contributing writer for the magazine.

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If you are what you eat, and especially if you eat industrial food, as 99 percent of Americans do, what you are is "corn." During the last year I've been following a bushel of corn through the industrial food system.

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The most historically American crop is also the most versatile. Corn ( Zea mays) is essentially grass that has been cultivated and bred to the size it is today. Originally cultivated in Mexico 7,000 years ago, corn is now America's biggest crop and a staple of the global food supply. Corn is used in many ways other than feasting on at the dinner table or popping for movie snacks, some you might not even realize.

(Image by Flickr user Sasakei)

Cornmeal is made by grinding whole corn. The coarsest meal is called grits, which is used to make corn flakes. A somewhat finer grade is sold in stores to make cornbread, deep-fry batter, and hushpuppies. Even more finely ground meal is called corn cones, and is used for baking and for dusting pizza dough. The finest grade of ground corn is corn flour, used for pancakes, donuts, breading, and baby food. Another type of cornmeal is called masa flour, which is made by treating corn with lime (alkalai). This releases the corn's niacin into a form the body can use. The resulting whole corn is called hominy, and ground treated corn is dried and powdered to make masa flour, which is then used to make tortillas and tamales.

When you get past corn as a whole food in itself, you get into the wet-mill process, which breaks down corn into its components, and here is where you get so many other corn products.

Corn steep liquor is a byproduct of the process of separating the various parts of corn (see the byproduct in this flowchart). It is the water used to soak the various components, and it is reused in several steps. Corn steep liquor contains acids, yeast, gluten, and plenty of nitrogen, and is partially fermented by the time it leaves the mill. It was discarded as waste until the 1940s, when scientists determined that corn steep liquor is the perfect medium in which to grow large quantities of penicillin.

Corn Starch is made from the endosperm of the corn, the part of the seed that exists to nourish the potential new plant. After the hull and germ are removed, the endosperm is ground up and the gluten is separated from the starch, leaving nothing but carbohydrate. Corn starch is used as a thickening agent for liquid food and an alternative to talc in body powder. It is mixed with sugar to make confectioners sugar and was once used to make clothing keep a nicely-pressed look. Corn starch is also the main ingredient in biodegradable plastic.

Corn syrup is made from corn starch. Starch is a carbohydrate, a molecular chain of sugars. Enzymes are added to the starch to break the chains into sugars, mainly glucose. Further processing can change the sugars into high-fructose corn syrup. HFCS is used to sweeten a variety of products, most notably soft drinks. Corn syrup is much cheaper and sweeter than cane sugar. A number of studies have linked the use of HFCS to the rise in obesity. Whether this correlation (which does not prove causation) is due to any organic differences between HFCS and cane sugar or to the quantity consumed is still under debate. The Corn Refiner's Association has asked the FDA for permission to change the term used for high-fructose corn syrup to "corn sugar".

People have made liquor from their crops for thousands of years, and in the western hemisphere that meant whiskey distilled from corn. During the settlement of the Appalachian Mountains by European immigrants, farmers found it much easier to transport their corn crop to distant markets when they distilled it first (and just as profitable, if not more so). Taxes imposed during the Civil War and later liquor prohibition laws split the corn whiskey industry into the legal distilling of Bourbon and the illegal distilling of moonshine, so called because it was produced at night to evade notice.

Distilled alcohol from grain is called ethanol. The word in modern usage usually refers to ethanol fuel or biofuel made by distilling corn. Regular gasoline-powered cars can run on gas blended with up to 10% ethanol. Corn is a renewable resource, so biofuels are seen as a replacement for fossil fuels. However, the growing use of corn for biofuel raises concerns about the diminishing availability of corn for food. Also, the production of biofuels uses as much -or more- energy than it produces.

Tea brewed from cornsilk is used as a remedy for urinary tract infections, as it has diuretic properties. The tea has been marketed to help everything from bedwetting to diabetes to cancer, but the medical community says there is insufficient evidence for such claims. Cornsilk is not harmful to most people, but there are some warnings for those with some health conditions or who are taking certain medications.

Oil is produced by squeezing the germ of the corn. It is used as a food ingredient and for frying food in (most appropriately for popping popcorn). Margarine is often made from corn oil, although other oils are used as well. Corn oil is also used in many cosmetics, soaps, medicines, and other products.

Corn germ is a waste product of the separation of corn components. It is what's left of the plant germ after the oil has been pressed out, and is used for livestock feed. However, components of corn germ can be used to make industrial glue stronger. This reduces the amount of resin required in the glue formula, which should make the adhesive less expensive to produce.

Meanwhile, we can use corn in all its harvest glory to decorate our homes and businesses for autumn.

Today is October 10, 2010-10.10.10! To celebrate, we've got all our writers working on 10 lists, which we'll be posting throughout the day and night. To see all the lists we've published so far, click here.

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The most historically American crop is also the most versatile. Corn (Zea mays) is essentially grass that has been cultivated and bred to the size it is today. Originally cultivated in Mexico 7,000 years ago, corn is now America's biggest crop and a staple of the global food supply.

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Most of us love eating corn. But the sad thing is, there are some indirect corn-related health risks you might not know about, yet. Corn based foods will not affect your health immediately, but it can be the underlying cause of major diseases. Learning and understanding the kinds of nutrients we get from the food we eat (such as corn) is a must to help us and our family prevent any future diseases.

Why eating corn-fed meat is dangerous for your health

We all know that most animals such as cattle, sheep and goats normally eat grass as their natural food. Due to modern economics, most factory farm owners who raise cattle, goat or sheep force-feed these animals corn instead of giving them access to eat their natural food, grass.

These animals are not used to digesting large amounts of corn. Changing the typical food they eat will result in the weakening of their digestive system. The worst part is that due to their high corn diet, they have dangerous strains of E. Coli in their digestive tracts, which has affected meat in the past, causing outbreaks of food poisoning. E. Coli poisoning is one of the indirect ways in which corn kills us.

Nutritional problems associated with corn-based products and derivatives

Corn-fed meats will have lower nutrient levels compared to grass-fed meats. It will lower the healthy omega-3 fatty acids and will increase the level of inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. Chronic inflammation can lead to heart disease and degeneration of health.

Corn oil can lead to abnormal balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in your body and it can also lead to chronic internal inflammation.

Corn oil is also made up of highly unstable polyunsaturated fats that can lead to inflammation.

The use of High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) can lead to obesity, diabetes, premature aging and other health issues.

Corn-based foods such as corn cereal, corn chips, corn syrup (used as a sweetener in soft drinks, and other syrups) and corn oil are a variety of foods we usually eat every day. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is extracted from corn to use as a cheap sweetener, which is worse than table sugar and is a cause of obesity and will also cause a negative impact to your blood sugar levels.

These foods contribute to excessive amounts of omega-6 fatty acids in our diet. It will cause an imbalance in your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, which leads to inflammation and oxidation within your body. This inflammation is the major cause of heart disease and strokes, while the oxidative damage can lead to various cancers.

Avoiding high fructose corn syrup and other corn-based products are the safest way to prevent possible health risks. Instead, eat fresh fruits or these protein cookies as your healthy snacks to satisfy your sweet taste and enjoy the nutrients and vitamins you will get.

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Corn Health Risks: Negative Effects of Corn in our Body

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Most of us love eating corn. But the sad thing is, there are some indirect corn-related health risks you might not know about, yet. Corn based foods will not affect your health immediately, but it can be the underlying cause of major diseases.