Made of Corn
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
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