Well a few months ago i heard of a place that had replaced all of their plastic water bottles with corn based plastic water bottle. They were excited because they felt they were changing the world. They would be changing the world if they had not been replacing plastic with corn. Corn farming is not a sustainable use of resources, it is over funded by the government and reduces the productivity of the soil.
Today in the news there was a story about how much corn there is in fast food. At Wendy's, for example, if you order a hamburger or chicken burger with fries there is not one item of food that you eat that is not related to corn. The cattle for the hamburgers, or chicken, have been feed only corn products. The bread has corn in it. The fries and chicken are fried in corn oil. They figured this out by testing the products for corn, rather than reading the ingredients. This lead to the findings that 93% of beef from fast food have been raised exclusively on corn. This study did not look at the soft drinks at the restaurants because the sugars added to them are all corn based.
Corn is also used in ethanol. Which is not a solution to anything besides votes in the midwest. With out government subsidies corn would not be grown in places where heavy fertilization is need. Bio fuels currently are a joke because there is more energy need for the production of the fuel than is produced. The government is subsidizing the current production which allows the companies to not produce the most effience bio fuels. There is a movie on the topic, King Corn, that looks interesting, but i have not seen it.
To truly change the way that gas is produced we need to change who we subsidize and what we use for bio fuels, but that is another story.
Corn should be reduced from our food supply. Yes it is good to have corn in some products but we should not be living in a age where almost every product that you by that is prepackaged has corn in it.
News article on CBC
Actual science article in National Academy of Sciences (it is currently free)
Today in the news there was a story about how much corn there is in fast food. At Wendy's, for example, if you order a hamburger or chicken burger with fries there is not one item of food that you eat that is not related to corn. The cattle for the hamburgers, or chicken, have been feed only corn products. The bread has corn in it. The fries and chicken are fried in corn oil. They figured this out by testing the products for corn, rather than reading the ingredients. This lead to the findings that 93% of beef from fast food have been raised exclusively on corn. This study did not look at the soft drinks at the restaurants because the sugars added to them are all corn based.
Corn is also used in ethanol. Which is not a solution to anything besides votes in the midwest. With out government subsidies corn would not be grown in places where heavy fertilization is need. Bio fuels currently are a joke because there is more energy need for the production of the fuel than is produced. The government is subsidizing the current production which allows the companies to not produce the most effience bio fuels. There is a movie on the topic, King Corn, that looks interesting, but i have not seen it.
To truly change the way that gas is produced we need to change who we subsidize and what we use for bio fuels, but that is another story.
Corn should be reduced from our food supply. Yes it is good to have corn in some products but we should not be living in a age where almost every product that you by that is prepackaged has corn in it.
News article on CBC
Actual science article in National Academy of Sciences (it is currently free)
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