Very interesting point of view on Corn. Comments?

Question

Corn's Impact on America's Diet, Health and Politics
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1524341

Answer 1

Corn is unhealthy. It is being modified and put into all our food in many forms, especially corn syrup. Corn is in 99 percent of our cereals and breads. Most non-diet sodas contain corn syrup along with most candy and hard candy.I have a feeling that this large intake of corn by an unaware population may be related to serious health problems such as diabetes. I personally buy my soda from Whole Foods which doesn't contain any corn. Similar problems can probably arise from soy, but not as bad.

As for politics, I cannot understand why the government dumps thousands of tons of corn into the ocean each year. Although it raises the price of corn and helps farmers maintain their livelihoods, I can't understand why they just don't put that corn to use by shipping it to other needy nations. Would that alternative really affect corn prices that much. What about laissez faire "leave alone" policies. If corn is so cheap and corn prices begin to dip, maybe corn farmers could just find something else to produce. After a while, everything would eventually balance out and maybe corn prices would naturally rise again.

Answer 2

No doubt, there are interests in deploying corn in every means possible, I'm not as convinced that they are as harmfully influential as Mike Pesca is. For example, livestock antibiotics would be used in any event when they are mass produced as they are. "Corn" states could hypotheitcally be bought more easily than non-"Corn" states merely because of less population, therfore less interests competing for the senatorial attention. If we give this perspective, who is more powerful, "big corn" or "big oil"?

Good question.

Answer 3

I'm allergic to corn. Corn seems like a good sorce of fuel, it will keep farms in production, but I don't know if I'd be able to hadle any exhaust.

Answer 4

come on...