Green Spotlight

Corn

Posted on June 3rd, 2008 by ivyr.
Categories: Enviro-news.

by Tyler Dean Simpson
Let’s say you’re eating ketchup, potato chips, or even chicken, do you seriously believe that’s all you are eating? WRONG, let’s take a close look at the one ingredient that is in almost everything you eat and drink. From soda to dog food, corn is everywhere, but how did it get there and what the heck is corn, of all things, doing in places like root beer and burgers?

Let’s start with why corn is in meat shall we? It all starts back at the farm where the farmer wants to feed his 6,540 head of cattle or 10,572 chickens with something cheaper than wheat, hay, straw or grass from free-range grazing. Most cattle ranches have switched to corn, which (due to cheapness) caught on very quickly to the point where almost all cattle (also chickens, turkeys, pigs, etc.) are corn fed.

So now, let’s say you try natural soda, made with real sugar.  It tastes great. Now you try something like Sprite or Coca-Cola; that stuff is way sweeter! Guess what they use to make things of that sort so much sweeter than they could possibly be with real sugar; corn in the form that you have probably seen in ingredient lists before, high fructose corn syrup, which is not only much sweeter than sugar but way cheaper as well.

Corn is in more places than just meat and soda. Imagine you are eating a relatively large breakfast and can take the whole thing apart to expose all the corn you are eating. The eggs on your plate come from corn fed chickens. If you’re eating bacon than you are probably eating meat from a corn fed pig. The milk in your glass; those cows eat mostly corn. Plus, the jam on your toast has high fructose corn syrup (as the second largest ingredient, right after strawberries). If you like margarine on your toast instead of butter, well that is made from corn oil too.  There you go, a dissected breakfast. Enjoy your plate of corn…. I mean “food.”

It goes farther than that, salmon, which are carnivores, are being genetically modified to be able to eat corn. Plus, it’s not just food that is being derived from corn these days. Corn is also a part of much of the packaging that the food comes in such as plastic grocery and vegetable bags, cardboard boxes, and the glue that holds all those things together. Plus, as if that isn’t enough, now many of us are starting to put corn into the gas tanks of our cars in the form of ethanol.

So America is a nation that is increasingly more dependent on corn. Because of so much land being devoted to growing corn, all other food is becoming much more expensive. Now there is a world food shortage because farms aren’t growing food to be eaten, but instead growing corn to be made into all of the things I mentioned above. In my opinion, there should be less corn. We should be eating more organic and locally grown food.  We should also be looking for other energy sources other than ethanol and oil. Do you think we can continue to eat and live this way? Say no.  Please say no.

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