We are What We Eat

Every time I travel abroad, I am reminded that we, in America, are eating under an illusion … that all the corn in our diets is good for us. It is not. I, personally, believe we have been sold an unhealthy bill of goods for years – dishonest advertising and promotion – just to enable food companies in the U.S. to sell cheap food that is so infused with chemicals at a high profit margin.

The main culprit is high fructose corn syrup – a chemical concoction that results with boiling an inedible strain of corn with acids to produce a “super sweetener.” High fructose corn syrup, banned in most countries in the world, is not a food substance but rather a chemical that tastes sweeter than sugar and tricks our brains to want more, much more. It’s making Americans fat and unhealthy.

Today, nearly all soda drinks in the U.S. are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. Our bodies digest sugar because it is a food while corn syrup lacks any nutritional value, is high in starch, and makes us fat.

Burgers at fast food joints in the U.S. once tasted better back then because the meat was leaner. Those were the days when cattle grazed on grass; today, they are fattened in feedlots on that same inedible corn mulch and antibiotics.

While there may not have been the abundance of food choices we have today, the quality of food we had while growing up was better. Then it all changed, and the American diet became corn-based … and many Americans became obese.

Today, corn syrup is ubiquitous in the food we buy in grocery stores even though it is a harmful chemical and is banned in many countries around the world. Walk through the aisles of most supermarkets and read the ingredients. Not only is corn syrup used in nearly every soda drink and many so-called “natural” juices but even in whole wheat bread, wrapped in a label that suggests it is good for you.

Quite a bit is being written about the hazards of consuming high fructose corn syrup. A study by Texas researchers, for example, shows that the body converts fructose to body fat with “surprising speed.”

An article in August 2008 “Wellness Letter” from the University of California carries an article, “High Fructose Corn Syrup – Not Such Sweet News.” It warns, “If you consume lots of HFCS-sweetened soft drinks and foods, or lots of any type of added sugar, cut down.”

We are the only country in the world that has permitted proliferation of corn-based chemical substances in our foods that is harmful to our health.

A talented team of young filmmakers – Ian Cheney, Curt Ellis and Aaron Woolf – has produced a documentary, King Corn, that reveals that 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 in the United States.

Today, nearly everything at McDonald’s and the other so-called fast food places is corn-based. Why? Because corn processed food is cheap to produce. It may not be good for you but it’s cheap.

Not only is the corn-based diet directly linked to obesity in America but also to an increase in heart disease and Type II diabetes, which is ravaging urban areas. America’s addiction to corny sweets is killing us, and our government is subsidizing it, according to King Corn, by providing financial incentives to farmers to grow greater amounts of the inedible modified type of corn, using powerful herbicides. By the way, it’s the same kind of corn used to produce ethanol that is mixed with gasoline to fuel our vehicles.

My wife and I, by contrast, have consciously avoided corn syrup and corn-processed foods for several years, preferring instead wild-caught fish, organic vegetables, and fresh fruit from local sources when possible … and we have been healthier, I believe, because of it. Eating better may cost us a little more but there’s an upside. We are returning ourselves to a time when quality of food was more important than it is now, and when food actually tasted nutritious because it was.

It took watching King Corn, shown recently on PBS Television, to remind me of the dangers present everywhere in the normal American diet, and what we have allowed the American food chain to become.

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Category: Personal notes