King Corn: The Crop That Drives Our Fast Food Nation

King Corn—The Subsidized Crop That Drives Our Fast-Food Nation

September 07, 2013 | 34,166 views

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By Dr. Mercola

The United States is the number one per capita consumer of corn in the world. As expounded in books like The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, high-fructose corn syrup and other corn-derivatives work their way into nearly every kind of processed food on the market.

In the US, corn is one of the top four most heavily subsidized food crops, so farmers have every reason to plant plenty of it.

Unfortunately, since corn is a grain, it breaks down to sugar very rapidly and typically increases your insulin resistance if regularly consumed. Elevated insulin levels in turn are linked to most chronic degenerative diseases, including everything from obesity and diabetes to premature aging.

Making matters worse, the vast majority of American-grown corn is also genetically engineered (GE) to produce Bt toxin (a pesticide that kills bugs by making their stomachs explode), which is then consumed by you.

Studies now show that, contrary to industry assurances, this built-in Bt toxin survives the journey through your digestive system, and can make you allergic to a wide range of substances. This is in stark contrast to naturally produced Bt toxin which is rapidly broken down in the environment and never makes it to your stomach.

As Corn Became King, a Fast-Food Nation Was Born

The featured documentary, King Corn¹, follows two college buddies, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, as they set out to learn more about corn—how it’s grown, and how it ends up in so many of our foods. As stated in the film’s synopsis:

“With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.”

Far from providing us with critical nutrition, US agricultural policies contribute to the declining health of Americans and worsens the out-of-control obesity epidemic. Current farm subsidies bring you high-fructose corn syrup, fast food, junk food, corn-fed beef raised in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), monoculture, and a host of other contributors to our unhealthful contemporary diet.

And as stated in the film, were you to grow corn without these government assistance payments, you’d be virtually guaranteed to lose money. The farm subsidies are what’s keeping the wheel of this cheap food ingredient rolling. In short, as stated in a recent research paper²:

“Government-issued payments have skewed agricultural markets toward the overproduction of commodities that are the basic ingredients of processed, energy-dense foods.”

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King Corn: The Crop That Drives Our Fast Food Nation