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The Surprising Truth About Your Diet
By Eliza Bicknell of Lotus Petal Yoga
Going to the supermarket and walking down the isles, you might think that the forty nine thousand different items, seventeen thousand new ones per year, represent a vast variety of foods from a huge diversity of species. But you would be wrong. Basically what you see and what you are eating all comes from one food source – corn. Scientists can (and have) taken a snip of your hair or fingernails, and, tracing carbon 13 molecules, prove it to you. Don’t believe me? Corn is what feeds all of the animals you eat – from the steer that that becomes your steak to the chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the farmed catfish and tilapia and sadly, even the carnivorous salmon. Eggs come from corn fed hens. Dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt come from corn fed cows. In processed foods, there’s ingredients like modified corn starch binding them together. Corn flour and corn oil are used to produce the fried items you eat. Much less obviously is the corn in the leavenings and lecithin, mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the golden food coloring, and even the citric acid, a preservative, all of which help to keep processed foods “fresh.” Drink soda, energy drinks, or fruit juice? Eat ketchup, salad dressing, canned soups, cake mixes, relishes, even mayonnaise? You’re drinking or eating some high fructose corn syrup which is what makes all of those items so sweet. Corn, in some form or another, is in your frozen foods, your processed hot dogs, bologna, margarine, shortening, candy, cakes, breads and even the vitamins you may be taking. It’s in your waffles and the syrup you pour over them; it’s in your Cheese Wiz and your coffee whitener. The list goes on and on and on. It’s hidden under so many names from xanthem gum to lecithin to dextrose to so many more, and once you know those names, you will find it in almost everything. Just for fun, Lets take a look at some fast food. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, a coke, milk shake, large fries, a classic cheeseburger and a Cobb salad. What do you think those nuggets are made of? Chicken that’s been deep fried? Think again! Chicken McNuggets contain thirty eight ingredients. Of the thirty eight ingredients, thirteen are derived from, you guessed it, corn. They include: Corn fed chicken, modified corn starch, mono-tri and diglycerides, dextrose, lecithin, corn fed chicken broth, yellow corn flour, cornstarch, vegetable shortening, partially hydrogenated corn oil, and citric acid. Apart from the corn derived items, just so you know, the other items in a McNugget include: Sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are artificial and processed chemicals (preservatives) used to keep various parts of the nugget from going rancid. Then there are ingredients like dimethylpolysiloxene (which, according to the handbook of food, is a suspected carcinogen, an established mutagen, and a reproductive effector). Perhaps the most alarming ingredient is butylhydroquinone or TBHQ. This is sprayed on to the nuggets to preserve their freshness. This chemical is a form of butane, or lighter fluid. Only .02% is allowed to be sprayed onto the nuggets and this is a good thing, as ingesting a single gram can cause nausea, vomiting, delirium, suffocation ad collapse. Ingesting five grams can kill you. If we take the rest of the food and run it through some tests in a lab, the results show: Soda (100% corn), milk shake (78% corn), salad dressing (65% corn), chicken nuggets (56% corn), cheeseburger (52% corn), and French fries, (23% corn). (This information comes from the book An Ominvores Dilemma by Michael Pollan which is an excellent book that I highly recommend.) If you think that eating other fruits and vegetables will keep you away from all this processed corn, think again! In the produce section, vegetables and fruit often have a waxy coating made of corn. The pesticides used to grow the vegetables is also derived from corn. How did this happen and does it matter? The first and most obvious reason is that corn is cheap. Corn is kept at below cost prices by the large corporations that purchase the corn and therefore farmers have only one option in order to survive, produce more corn. The federal government pays farmers subsidies of $5 billion a year. By encouraging the overproduction of this crop and hardly any other, we insure that the corn made calorie will find its way into our bodies in the form of an animal fat, a sugar or a starch. In addition, this corn made calorie will be the cheapest source of food around. Despite the fact that we struggle to get rid of the surplus corn we have, taxpayers will pay farmers $14 billion a year to grow even more corn. The average bushel of corn (56 pounds) sells for about $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow it. Congress subsidizes corn by the bushel, there by insuring that the125,000-square miles of American farmland used to grow corn will continue to do so. An excellent film which discusses this aspect in more depth is the documentary King Corn. Certainly, this corn fed food chain offers cheap calories in a variety of forms and we can more easily insure that people will thrive, or more than thrive, on all of the excess calories. In the long run however, most people pay a high price for these cheap calories in the forms of obesity, Type II diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Nearly 20 percent of the calories Americans consume now come from corn sweeteners in beverages. This, some argue, is the single greatest factor in obesity, especially childhood obesity. (Did you know there is even an epidemic of obese 6 month olds out there right now? 6 month olds!) If you drink just one 20 oz soda per day every day for one year you will gain 26 lbs of fat. Type 2 diabetes is also on the rise and it’s no coincidence that both diabetes and obesity have increased in our culture just as corn made sweetness so cheap that soft drink makers could lower their prices and make larger serving sizes. Some research actually shows that high fructose corn syrup may be worse for your health than sugar. Some studies show it is metabolized differently and goes straight to the liver where it is turned straight into fat, elevating triglycerides. Little is known about the health effects of eating animals that have themselves eaten so much corn, but in the case of beef, researchers have found that corn-fed beef is higher in saturated fats than grass-fed beef. Growing corn and feeding it to beef wastes tons of energy. When you feed it to a steer or a chicken, 90% of its energy is lost to living and metabolizing. Every step in the food chain reduces the amount of food energy by a factor of ten; it’s called the 10% rule in ecology. This is why there are fewer predators than there are prey. For example, take seven pounds of corn. Eat it directly and take all the energy from it. Make it into bread and you can make twenty two loaves. Feed it to a cow and you can get only one pound of beef, just one single hamburger patty. With billions of people living in poverty and starvation, feeding corn to animals is not the most efficient use of the land. Growing so much corn has also taken a toll on our soil, the local water and the overall biodiversity of the landscape. Modern corn hybrids demand more nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop. Corn requires more pesticide use than any other food crop. Runoff from these chemicals finds its way into the groundwater. To produce the chemicals we apply to our cornfields takes vast amounts of oil and natural gas. (Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas, pesticides from oil.) America's corn crop might look like its sustainable, but it is actually inefficient. Guzzling a half a gallon of fossil fuel for every bushel of corn produced. We really are sacrificing the health of both our bodies and the environment by growing and eating so much corn.
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Contributor's Note
I am obsessed with diet and nutrition and have read literally hundreds of books on the topic. A great book that discusses this subject in more depth is the Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
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What a fantastic intel, Eliza.
The information is well researched and presented and a definite 5 in my book.
Thank you for sharing.
Frederick
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Thanks so much Fredrick, I appreciate your nice comments! Diet is so important and many people are unaware of things like this.
Amazing article and quite an eye-opener. (For a minute I thought I was on the NYT site or Newsweek  ) I've never figured out why corn syrup is preferred over sugar derived from sugar cane, which grows much faster and more efficiently under intense tropical sunshine. This intel explains it. One other thing, I recall that in addition to using all this corn for food, it's now also being turned into ethanol. I thought that was good; now I realize that's not terrific as it continues to encourage monoculture.
 | | nick Jan 13, 2010 10:06 | |
The other day I was reading the ingredients for the dog food I buy (Pedigree). Guess what - it's mostly corn, too!
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
yes this is so true! ita also in the packaging of stuff - the linings of carboard boxes the food comes in, the insulation in the store etc. its everywhere!
Excellent intel Eliza. I´d never thought about it before. Well researched and interesting article. Top score from me.
This is indeed a tantastic eye-opener and very well researched. I read about the dangers of HFCS a year ago and was horrified to find that it's in 100% of the low fat salad dressings and iced tea type drinks that you see in the grocery stores. I immediately went back to regular salad dressings, or making my own, and started to drink more of my own Iced Green Tea With Fresh Lime rather than buying bottled drinks. I also started shopping more at the local Farmers Market for fresh fruit and vegetables, but you still never know exactly they are coated with. Horrible isn't it, to think that many of the reasons that we feel unwell or have trouble dieting are due to the foods that we eat, many of which we assume are healthy and good for us.
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