Pollan basically attributes all of our current eating habits to the government policy to promote a corn surplus. Overproduction causes a decrease in prices that can be paid to farmers for their corn. So, prices continue to drop for bushels of corn, but farmers continue to overproduce because that's the only way they can continue to make a living. They sell their corn to the grain elevator, which ships it to various places, including animal feedlots and industrial processing factories. The grain elevator pays them a certain price per bushel, like $2.50 or so. The price per bushel of corn has been declining in the past decades due to overproduction. To make up for this, the government has a policy that provides a little extra per bushel, like maybe $.40 depending on the market. More subsidy if prices are low, and less if they're higher. But overall, the target price from the government has also been declining. So the only thing farmers can do to stay afloat is to produce more, since the government hasn't provided them with a way of staying alive by producing something else (and decreasing the corn surplus). The corn surplus causes it to be so cheap in America that we can sell it to Mexico and drive subsistence farmers off their land (because they have little to sell when American crops are so cheap) and cause them to starve. Additionally, marketers have learned to sell things in huge portions for just a teeny bit more than a smaller size, so that people will actually eat more than they should (most fast food products are derived from corn, including the animals). Thus, the corn surplus at once causes obesity and malnutrition.
60% of the corn grown in the US is used towards animal feedlots. Cattle were meant to graze on grass, not eat corn. Their stomachs should be neutral pH, as they are meant for grass. Eating corn means a buildup of acid-tolerant bacteria to help break down the corn, so the cows' stomachs become non-neutral, acidic instead. This means when we eat the steaks fed on corn, we are more likely to develop stomach problems because the bacteria from corn-fed cattle can thrive in our acidic stomachs and beat up our own collection of E.Coli. In addition to corn flakes, they feed young steers beef fat from the slaughterhouse as well as chicken meal and bits of other animal matter (increasing beef's content of saturated fat). Cows are... herbivores! They did not evolve to eat animal matter; their bodies can't tolerate it. So they get sick, and so our ingenious pharmaceutical people pump them up with antibiotics and hormones so they can tolerate the feed and survive long enough to get slaughtered. So the water in these areas is contaminated by a number of things: petroleum to run the pesticide spraying trucks for growing shit-tons of corn, synthetic fertilizer, animal waste and gas, pesticides, and hormones and antibiotics. Instead of the animals providing manure as fertilizer to the crops, grass providing feed to the animals (aka an ecological system with no real waste), we just have a bunch of waste products and harmful economic and social impacts. Of course so that large corporations can make lots of $$$ (Cargill and ADM I believe are the two largest in corn processing).
Another percentage of corn is broken down to make all sorts of sweeteners: high-fructose corn syrup, maltose, dextrose, etc. And Pollan continues to talk about all the horrible things in fast food meals, including petroleum compounds! Anyway, he's gotten me all riled up, but his writing style is humorous and jestful and curious, rather than moralizing or angry. So it's easy to read, as he is professor of journalism. So it would make sense.
Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten.
1 comment:
so is there even a movement for grass fed cattle? is there some kind of estimate of how much it impacts our health, as in, how much the medical bills cost?
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