Tuesday, 19 July 2011
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King Corn and the fat planet
If you look back at the last 20-30 years, the overweight problems in the US have risen steadily in relation to the fattening of corporate bank accounts. People are now a commodity, to be bought and sold for a profit. US corporations and the Federal Government have been working hard to get people fat! Why? Because there's money in them rolls! Getting people fat is a multi-BILLION dollar business and then some! From the food we eat to the diets that fail; Americans lineup as quickly as they can to get fat and die! Almost everything Americans eat contains corn: high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods are the staples of the modern diet. And to make it worse, it's BIO-ENGINEERED SUGAR! Where does all this sugar come from? Corn! That's right, corn! Corn is in almost everything, but you can't even eat it in it's pre-processed form! The breadth of the problem is now clear: the American food system is built on the abundance of corn, an abundance perpetuated by a subsidy system that pays farmers to maximize production.
Learn more about corn by watching the documentary, King Corn. It will open your eyes to the damage being done by this rampant and grotesque cultivation of genetically modified corn.
All the beef sold in stores and restaraunts are nothing more than Beef flavoured sugar! Seriously! Cows are forced to eat corn as their only source of food - no grass, just corn with a little bit of hay - and this is NOT GOOD for the cows! They were not made to eat corn! They were made to eat GRASS! So not only are we killing these cows for food, we are infecting them with bio-engineered crap to make them produce more milk, more beef and more problems! A 2 liter of soda is nothin BUT SUGAR! That's it! SUGAR! And people wonder why they are fat!? Or have Diabetes?! STOP EATING THAT CRAP! No, it won't matter how much you exercise, because even WHILE your exercising, you're drinking SUGAR! Gatorade, Powerade, Protein Bars and shakes are all made of SUGAR! So while you're wasting your time, energy and money at the gym - the fitness and diet industry, the food industry, the government and the farmers are all laughing their asses off on way to the bank with YOUR MONEY and YOUR HEALTH!
The first corn hybrids were crafted by farmers in humble awe of the possibilities of the plant, and when corn subsidies were altered in the early seventies, the nation still struggled with widespread hunger. But bad outcomes can come from well-intentioned actions. In reality, those efforts laid the groundwork for the current problems that come from having too much food, at too low a quality. Yes, food is cheaper now, but we are only beginning to understand the full cost that cheapness demands from our environment, our health, and our social fabric.
Today the process of questioning our culture and agriculture is underway in many forms. If you ride a motorcycle through Iowa now, you will pass an increasing number of fields planted in organic corn, or grazed on by free-ranging cattle or buffalo, using farming practices that are safer for all of us. You will pass homes and greenhouses where heirloom varieties of vegetables are being preserved with great urgency and diligence. Maybe even you will get that feeling that Columbus had when he first set eyes on the New World, and wrote to Queen Isabela in Spain that he had found something more valuable than gold, a crop that could feed a continent.
SOME FACTS ABOUT CORN AND FARMING!
70% of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are consumed by livestock.
An average steak from a feedlot-raised cow contains as much as nine grams of saturated fat. A comparable steak from grass-fed cow might have 1.3 grams of saturated fat.
U.S. taxpayers have provided more than $50 billion in subsidies to corn farmers over the past decade.
Between 2003 and 2005, 66% of crop subsidies went to 10% of farmers.
Between 1997 and 2005, the industrial broiler chicken industry saved $11.25 billion and the industrial hog industry saved $8.5 billion from farm bill policies that kept corn and soybean prices below the cost of production.
Over the past three decades, consumption of high fructose corn syrup has increased 1,000%.
Between 1970 and 2007, the number of acres planted in corn in the U.S. increased by 39%.
Between 1970 and 2007, Iowa’s average yield of corn increased 109%, rising from 86 to 180 bushels per acre.
In 2007, 92.9 million acres of farmland were devoted to growing corn. In contrast, 2 million acres were planted in vegetables.
In your body:Rank of refined sugar, or sucrose, among most-used sweeteners in the U.S. in 1966: 1
Rank in 2007: 2
Rank of high-fructose corn syrup in 2007: 1
Estimated percentage of high-fructose corn syrup consumed from beverages: 66
Rank of soft drinks among top beverages consumed by Americans: 1
Minimum percentage of a soda that is made up of high-fructose corn syrup: 7
Maximum percentage: 14
Percentage by which high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper than sugar: 60
Average, in pounds, of high-fructose corn syrup consumed by an American in 1970: 0.6
Average, in pounds, consumed in 2000: 73.5
Size, in ounces, of McDonald’s Supersize soda, discontinued in 2004: 42
Size, in ouces, of McDonald’s new extra-large soda, Hugo, introduced in 2007: 42
Percentage of Americans categorized as overweight or obese in 1971: 47.7
Percentage in 2004: 66
Percentage of American children categorized as overweight or obese in 1971: 4
Percentage in 2004: 17.5
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