A recent watching of the movie “King Corn” has brought me to realize again the food that I consume. I like to think that I am “organic” and “natural” foods eater – or I try as hard as I can to be. But honestly, it’s quite hard and not to mention expensive.
“King Corn” is about two guys who go to the great corn belt of Iowa, and learn to discover how the small and tiny kernel grew to be our greatest most substantial item in our diet. It’s hard to believe that Iowa is the greatest producers of corn, and none of it is for our direct consumption. All the corn grown in Iowa is not even edible to us. It’s all grown for either the production of high fructose corn syrup or for feed stock. So if you think about, everything that we eat is CORN!! Everything consume is either corn feed or corn based. Our diet is a corn diet – which is a VERY unhealthy diet.
It’s hard, yet very easy to believe that something as simple as corn has grown and evolved to be something we depend on so much – and not even in it’s most purest form. After reading books as “The Botany of Desire” and “The Omnivores Dilemna” (both by Michael Pollan) one can only wonder, why we chose to eat what we eat, and how it came to be. How has our culture and our consumption changed so that our dietary needs have grown from what we cannot even grow from our own hands?
I’m not really sure how I’m going to change my eating habits yet- more so than what I have already done, other becoming vegetarian. But, it’s certainly food for thought.
