We are all made of corn. Take a strand of your hair. A recent study proved that if you are like the average American consumer today, your hair is 69% made of corn carbon. This is in contrast to the 5% of corn carbon that is in the hair of Europeans. Americans use more corn in their diet than anyone else, and the corn content of the American diet is partially responsible for our country’s widespread obesity and the prevalence of diabetes.
America’s over-production of corn has serious consequences for our health and for our environment. How is it possible that we are made of corn?Most of the beef, chickens, and even salmon eat corn. Today, it is rare to find anything not made of corn. We cook our food in corn oil, and we use corn-based sweeteners to sweeten everything from sodas to a pack of gum or even cereal.
Everything you eat at McDonalds has corn in it: the corn-fed burger, the bun with corn starch, the soda with corn syrup, and even the fries soaked in corn oil. So it’s safe to say, we are made of corn. Before the 1970’s, the government, as part of the New Deal, paid farmers to grow less food then they were already making in order to avoid overproduction.However, under the Richard Nixon administration, the agriculture industry was revolutionized under the slogan “get big, or get out,” urging farmers to plant commodity plants like corn, and buy out their neighbor’s farms if they refused to become big. Farmers were paid government subsidies when they grew corn.
This means that they were paid money even for just buying the corn seeds. This resulted in a surplus that was so extensive, stalks of corn were left to rot by the sides of fields all over America.When corn prices fell steeply, the government looked into ways to use the surplus to create more demand, and to profit from it. It was in the mid-1970s that American livestock switched from their native grass to be fed an exclusive corn diet.
Due to the massive demand America has for cheap beef, cows are fed corn grains. Because, corn is a high-starch, high-energy food, it shortens the time it usually takes for a grass fed cow to fatten from years to just a few months. The problem is, cows are not built to digest corn, and so we are actually poisoning them while we try to get the most meat that we can for America.Due to the severity of the situation, cows are pumped with hormones and antibiotics just to keep them alive.
In fact, if we didn’t kill the cattle when we do, six months later, the cattle would die anyways. The mid-70’s was also the beginning of the rise of high fructose corn syrup. Now, I’m not talking about the corn we eat on the cob. There are many types of corn. The surplus corn needs to be chemically processed in order to be edible.
Basically, the average American eats 200 more calories a day than we did in the 1970s, a major factor being corn.This is why the levels of obesity and diabetes in America have increased dramatically within the past thirty years. So much so, that statistics show that we are the first generation of Americans who might actually be outlived by our parents. Okay, so what can you do? Before calling up an anti-animal abuse organization or blaming farmers for growing corn, remember that corn is an entirely government-funded industry, from growing corn to funding research programs to find new uses for corn. That’s right, the government uses our tax dollars to make us fat.
You can write letters to our congressmen in hopes of changing the Farm Bill, which sets the rules of food and agriculture in the United States and is changed every several years. Being a consumer, you can also join one of the many groups boycotting high fructose corn syrup. Finally, if you can afford it, next time your buying any type of meat, support the farms that still feed their cows naturally, and buy grass-fed meat. Support the cause in some way because the future of our nation, and the health of all our people, depend on it
