For my History 202 class we had to do a reading about the power of corn from a book called "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. Sounds kinda dumb right? but I found it totally interesting! It brought back memories of watching King Corn in Anatomy/Physiology last year during our nutrition unit. It's kind of ridiculous how corn is such a huge part of our diet and we don't even realize it. Corn has shaped the food industry! That's right this little vegetable...
...has shaped a large portion of our food industry! Corn is a great material with lots of starch and can now be produced in large masses with chemical fertilizers and farming technology. High fructose corn syrup was a miraculous invention and a lot of our food turns out to be just a clever re-arrangement of corn. In fact, a lot of those random, obscure additives in our food are one of those corn re-arrangements!
Even our meat comes from corn because cows, pigs, and chickens are now fed corn because it is cheaper and fattens them up faster, which increases production and allows the price of meat to be lower. That's good for us, right?! Only sad thing is that the corn isn't good for cows and many of the animals have had to become adapted to eating corn. I'm not an animal activist or anything, I just think it's super interesting the role corn plays in our lives. So moral of the story, eat more fresh fruits and veggies and next time you get processed/packaged food from the supermarket, look at the ingredients and see much of it is made from corn! You will be shocked, I know I was!
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