King Corn movie

Zac talked about this movie in his post, I thought I'd share my summary with you... 

(PS for Zac : If you want to add something, feel free...)

KING CORN MOVIE

The movie opens on a striking fact: "For the first time in American history, our generation was at risk of having a shorter life-span than our parents. And it was because of what we ate. "

When two graduated college students discovered than hamburger is directly connected to hair, they were quite puzzled. How can this be? Corn is the answer.

The influence of corn is emphasized throughout the movie. High fructose corn syrup dominates the market.

In order to analyze the journey of corn,the two protagonists decide to move from Boston to Iowa to grow 1 acre of corn and figure out how corn can end up in hair.

The excess of corn in clearly showed in the documentary. Yellow corn dominates the entire middle part of the US. Iowa even has "corn palace". To put it in a nutshell, corn is part of the US everyday life.

Changes begun in agriculture in 1973 with the new Secretary of Agriculture, who wanted expansion and more food. Big farmers got bigger thanks to the government's aid.

Nowadays, without the government program, farmers are losing money. The two "apprentice" farmers received $28 from the government by telling them that they will be growing 1 acre of corn.

Fertilizers (named "Ammonia") are used to grow 4 times more corn than their great grand parents could grow.

The two protagonists realized that 31 000 seeds could be planted in 18 minutes in 1 acre thanks to industrialized progress.

The documentary underlines the idea that corn is "industrialized". The plants tolerate living close together. (2000 bushes per acre gives a huge amount of food)

In order to avoid having weeds on their land, they spray the land with a 90 foot sprayer containing a chemical named "liberty" designed only for "liberty" ground.

When they finally taste their corns, it is " not very good", " disgusting" and "taste like crap". Indeed, corn is not eatable is it. It has to be processed first.

Since corn is a raw material, Iowa farmers cannot feed themselves anymore.

Corn is mixed with other farms corn. It is nearly impossible to know where your production will end up. It is a " game of probability". Out of 10 000 pounds, about 10% of the production is turned into ethanol (use for the ethanol industry)

4 090 pounds are turned into sweeteners, and the remaining 5 500 pounds are used to feed cattle ( which eventually turns into meat!)

60% of the cattle ration is corn. The truth is far worse : They kill the corn-fed cattle rapidly because the cattle will be dead by 6 months anyway by the corn feeding.

In order to find where this corn feeding ends up, you have to leave the corn bell and go to Colorado. The example of the "Bledsoe Cattle Co." is striking. They feed the cattle with corn and then sell them back. They are growing 7000 acres of corn of year to feed the animals. This is what the "new look" of family farm looks like.

Corn replaced grass for cattle. Before, cattle would spend their time in open grass field. Nowadays, cattle are stocked in a field land, so that they are feed more rapidly with corn( even though corn can make them sick)

Up to 90% of US cattle are feed with corn now. However, the animals could developed diseases such as "acidosis" and could dies. In order to avoid this, low doses of antibiotics are mixed within corn.

However, feeding the animals with corn has terrible consequences. The animal becomes obese and its muscle tissues are actually fat tissues. While the average animal has 1.7g of saturated fat, the corn-fed animal has 9g of saturated fat.

So, the ground beef ( the one used for hamburgers) is fat disguised with meat... and it is American's favorite meat!

If you're under 30, chances are that you've been fed with only corn-fed beef.

Why? The answer is simple : Grass is more expensive and the US demands cheap food.

Corn price dropped but its production increased. This underlines the fact that productivity keeps increasing. Therefore, when too much corn was produced, the corn sweetener industry exploded. High fructose corn syrup, which is defined as a "science" in the documentary is obtained by boiling down the corn. This "technology" goes into drinks, enhances flavor, decreases the acidic quality of the tomato sauce and adds more brownness in bread. It is a "complex innovative system". It offers " a variety of choices for such little prices" according to a representative of a firm producing the item.

Here is the cold truth : almost every single item contains high fructose corn syrup.

( By the way, when the two protagonists tried to replicate the process at home, they were using corrosive products in order to obtain the syrup...)

As a consequence, the consumption of table sugar dropped by 30% since the introduction of high fructose corn syrup sweeteners on the market.

Corn is basically grown to be turned into sugar. The nutritional values are given up in the bargain and the nature of corn is transformed in the process.

(Empty calories are found in corn syrup, with zero nutritional values)

Corn grown in lands has a 70% chance to end up in beverage in order to sweeten it.

Any soda products contain corn syrup, which also leads to drinking more calories than before. (A driver in NYC explained that by stopping to drink sodas, he lost 1/3 of his weight) This affects the metabolism. Higher risks of type II diabetes is involved as well.

Obesity is strongly linked with food and the lack of exercise. Cheap food is essentially unhealthy food. Statistics demonstrated that drinking one soda per day doubled the chance of type II diabetes.

US people don't think about what they put on their systems.

Keep in mind that when you are eating at McDonald, you are basically eating corn!

A corn farmer acknowledged " We are growing crap, the poorest quality that the world has ever seen" and therefore he does not eat the corn he produced, he only sells it.

It is indeed the government's money that keeps people floated. ( otherwise, people would lose money.) With 1 acre, the total cost was $349.92, the revenue was $330 if they sell everything. Thanks to the $28 direct payment and the subsidiary system that reward the surplus of corn, they are able to recover from the loss.

This is the only way to keep the production growing full blasts.

Plenty of food is the motto, and cheap corn is actually the raw material for overweight people.

"It's America's best-kept secret. We feed ourselves with approximately 16 or 17% of our take home pay "

Nowadays, food is a commercial operation , the age of plenty. Fewer people actually produced food than before.

As it is stated in the end, " [we are the ] First generation to live in a time where abundance brings too much".

PS: Did you know that Iowa produces enough corn to feed the entire US ?