July 11, 2008
han: nathangotsch: Things I learned from watching King Corn, a documentary about two guys who move to Iowa to learn about and grow corn. Most of the corn that’s grown in the US is not edible. It’s used as animal feed or to make corn byproducts like high fructose corn syrup. Cattle used to amble around fields and eat grass all day. Now they’re kept in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), fed corn and have nowhere to roam. The combination of a corn diet and lack of movement cause them to get fatter quicker, which allows them to be butchered sooner. (That’s good news, relatively speaking, because eating corn for much longer will actually kill them.) Because their bodies aren’t meant to eat so much corn, cattle suffer from a condition known as acidosis, which causes death if not treated, so the corn they’re fed is supplemented with low doses of antibiotics. (Livestock now consume 70% of the antibiotics used in the United States.) Dealing with waste is a huge problem for CAFOs. A facility with around 100,000 head of cattle produces as much waste as a city of 1.7 million people. Using corn for feed produces an animal whose muscle tissue more closely resembles fat than the lean meat found in wild animals. For example, a T-bone steak from corn-fed beef can have as much as nine grams of saturated fat, whereas the same cut of meat from grass-fed cattle would have only 1.3 grams of fat. Americans’ favorite meat is ground beef, which one scientist interviewed says “is really not meat but it’s rather fat disguised as meat. It contains 65% of its calories by energy as fat.” If you were born in the last 30 years in America, it’s a good bet that all the beef you’ve ever eaten was corn-fed. The dominant sugar in the Western diet comes from corn: high fructose corn syrup, which “basically has no nutritional value, only adverse metabolic effects and empty calories,” according to another scientist. Turning corn into high fructose corn syrup is a complicated process that involves using sulfuric acid and harmful enzyme proteins. High fructose corn syrup is the main ingredient in many flavored drinks like juice and soda pop.  Studies show that drinking one soda a day doubles your risk of Type 2 Diabetes. ”Soda is liquid candy,” said one doctor, but people aren’t as conscious of the calories they contain because they’re drinking — rather than eating — them. Corn byproducts are so ubiquitous that they’re even in toothpaste. (Sorbitol is produced from corn sugar dextrose.) Here’s a list of products that contain corn or corn byproducts in case I’ve piqued your curiosity. Just watched this the other day, it was interesting. The high-fructose corn syrup lady was the devil, I think. I’m reading Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan now and the first section is all about corn, so it’s giving me even more weird info. 

han:

nathangotsch:

Things I learned from watching King Corn, a documentary about two guys who move to Iowa to learn about and grow corn.

  • Most of the corn that’s grown in the US is not edible. It’s used as animal feed or to make corn byproducts like high fructose corn syrup.
  • Cattle used to amble around fields and eat grass all day. Now they’re kept in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), fed corn and have nowhere to roam. The combination of a corn diet and lack of movement cause them to get fatter quicker, which allows them to be butchered sooner. (That’s good news, relatively speaking, because eating corn for much longer will actually kill them.)
  • Because their bodies aren’t meant to eat so much corn, cattle suffer from a condition known as acidosis, which causes death if not treated, so the corn they’re fed is supplemented with low doses of antibiotics. (Livestock now consume 70% of the antibiotics used in the United States.)
  • Dealing with waste is a huge problem for CAFOs. A facility with around 100,000 head of cattle produces as much waste as a city of 1.7 million people.
  • Using corn for feed produces an animal whose muscle tissue more closely resembles fat than the lean meat found in wild animals. For example, a T-bone steak from corn-fed beef can have as much as nine grams of saturated fat, whereas the same cut of meat from grass-fed cattle would have only 1.3 grams of fat.
  • Americans’ favorite meat is ground beef, which one scientist interviewed says “is really not meat but it’s rather fat disguised as meat. It contains 65% of its calories by energy as fat.”
  • If you were born in the last 30 years in America, it’s a good bet that all the beef you’ve ever eaten was corn-fed.
  • The dominant sugar in the Western diet comes from corn: high fructose corn syrup, which “basically has no nutritional value, only adverse metabolic effects and empty calories,” according to another scientist.
  • Turning corn into high fructose corn syrup is a complicated process that involves using sulfuric acid and harmful enzyme proteins.
  • High fructose corn syrup is the main ingredient in many flavored drinks like juice and soda pop.  Studies show that drinking one soda a day doubles your risk of Type 2 Diabetes. ”Soda is liquid candy,” said one doctor, but people aren’t as conscious of the calories they contain because they’re drinking — rather than eating — them.
  • Corn byproducts are so ubiquitous that they’re even in toothpaste. (Sorbitol is produced from corn sugar dextrose.)

Just watched this the other day, it was interesting. The high-fructose corn syrup lady was the devil, I think. I’m reading Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan now and the first section is all about corn, so it’s giving me even more weird info.