

Fast Food: Just Another Name for Corn - kwamenum86
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/fast-food-anoth.html

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rgrieselhuber
My wife and I really started paying attention to where our food comes from a
few years ago. We've never really eaten fast food on a regular basis, but even
so-called normal food is often prepared from ingredients of dubious origin. In
particular, high fructose corn syrup is in _everything_.

Here are some discoveries we made:

1\. Most of the major chain restaurants use one or two suppliers that
specialize in things like laser-cut chicken mash with painted on grill marks
and similarly horrendous things. Once your tastebuds recognize food from those
providers, it's almost impossible to eat at any of those places again.

2\. Much of what is labeled "organic" fits some legal definition but not the
real definition of what organic is supposed to provide. We ended up
contracting with a local CSA (community supported agriculture) group for about
$60 / month to get a more than ample supply of fresh fruits and vegetables,
grown in season and no more than 30 miles from our neighborhood. You could go
to the farm at any time and verify that your food was being grown as
advertised.

3\. We also found meat suppliers that will ship grass-fed beef, goat meat,
etc. to our house for about $9 pound. It's a little more expensive than what
you would get at the store, but it's a lot less scary.

After making these changes, we found ourselves with better tasting food, more
energy and more interest in cooking for ourselves.

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biohacker42
Can you share the contact info for #3?

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rgrieselhuber
Sure. I was in San Diego, and we used a meat supplier called Old Creek Ranch
on the central coast in California: <http://www.oldcreekranch.net/>

They aren't a well-oiled production machine (which is the point, right? :-) )
so orders will usually take a little longer than you expect but it's worth it.

This site also has links to suppliers around the country:
<http://www.eatwild.com/>

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thomasmallen
Corn is the most abundant and popular food in the world, beating out rice. I'm
not sure how this is surprising.

"We're seeing that corn is the number-one reason that fast food is so cheap
and available," said Meredith Niles, a food policy analyst at the Center for
Food Safety who was not involved in the study. "U.S. programs are subsidizing
obesity in this country."

U.S. programs are making sure that people have food to eat. Boo!

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MaysonL
Google "high fructose corn syrup" diabetes

It's not just obesity.

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thomasmallen
The article doesn't mention HFCS. It talks about the horrors of selling corn-
fed burgers and such.

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MaysonL
So? Corn-fed burgers often come with the suchness of sodas, which are likely
worse for you than the burgers. The fact that the article fails to mention
HFCS is a problem with the article, not my post [IMHO].

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thomasmallen
I think that diabetes and HIV are big problems while we're at it.

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bjtitus
The book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" talks a lot about this. Basically,
everything in American diets is corn based (corn fed beef, chicken, corn
syrup, corn starch, etc.)

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fallentimes
Fast Food Nation is also an interesting read. They can make practically
anything taste well, like anything.

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maximilian
Despite the fact that Fast Food nation has a section devoted to "fast food", I
found it to be a "The Jungle" for the 90s. The real muckraking was its expose
of the meatpacking industry of the midwest and its terrible labor practices. I
could care less if they can make something smell like a cheeseburger. I care a
lot about _how_ we get our meat. I think this is an issue that is as important
or more than fast food troubles.

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martythemaniak
I have a little pet name for the horrid places that are planted in the middle
of sub/exurban parking lots - "subsidized corn dispensaries". You know the
places - 'patios' that have a lovely view of all the parked cars, fake
meaningless paraphernalia on the walls, facades that try to vaguely evoke real
architectures and all they have on the menu is corn, wrapped in corn, fried in
corn then served with a side of corn.

Around here they are known as "East Side Marios" or "Jack Astor's", around
your place they might be "Chotcki's" or whatever, but we know they're all the
same crap.

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dgordon
+1 for attempt at Office Space allusion, and the first paragraph as a whole.
"Planted in the middle of sub/exurban parking lots" describes it well.

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mattmaroon
I would pray every day if I had someone to pray to for a corn famine. Some
insect, weather pattern or bacteria or something that just wrecks the entire
crop for a few years.

It would be painful for a lot of people, but corn, like oil, is so cheap and
easy that we won't let it go until we're absolute forced to. Our dependence on
it is killing us slowly and surely. Our corn monoculture forms the base of an
unsteady food economy and an unhealthy, overprocessed diet. We've traded costs
at the dinner table for costs in the hospital, and we've come out way behind.

~~~
anamax
> I would pray every day if I had someone to pray to for a corn famine. Some
> insect, weather pattern or bacteria or something that just wrecks the entire
> crop for a few years.

There almost was sometime around 1990. A killer strain of some corn disease
was going around and there was serious concern that corn would go extinct.
Then someone found a resistant strain somewhere in Mexico and hybridization
did the rest.

A friend of mine who happens to be allergic to corn was one of the people
tracking the spread of the disease. Then their equipment was destroyed by
lightning and they sat blind for several months.

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pragmatic
If you don't like it, don't eat it. I don't agree with crop subsidies but
trying to make fast food the new smoking is a bit over the top.

I'm noticing a pattern: "We have a new President taking his place in the White
House. It's a great opportunity to rearrange agricultural policy and to think
about obesity," she said. "This study shows that it comes down in a lot of
ways to one product."

Several of these articles are asking Obama to overreach his constitutional
powers and assume the role of dictator.

That's why so many people resent this type of thing. Instead of presenting the
facts and letting people judge for themselves, these people advocate
government intervention.

Inside every liberal is a little dictator waiting to get out.

~~~
icey
I'm noticing a pattern of people STILL whining about politics and it's after
election day. I thought we all agreed to get it out of our system on November
4th.

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simpleenigma
If you are interested in this you might check out King Corn. It is a
documentary about two guys who grow 1 acre of corn to see how it is done and
where it goes. They also get into the fact that Americans are mostly made of
corn because of the incentives to grow it.

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vlad
A comment from the article made me think: if a cow is pumped full of drugs,
hormones, and food it doesn't normally eat (corn), with the goals of making
the animal as fat as possible as fast as possible in order to feed the most
humans in the quickest time, how can that meat not cause similar side effects
when eaten by humans?

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mynameishere
Because it undergoes various chemical reactions between being corn and being
cow.

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vlad
I appreciate your prompt reply! However, I can't parse your post because I
can't come up with a word for "it", as used in your sentence. I've tried
"meat", but it doesn't work.

Could you please elaborate on what you are trying to say?

Are you trying to write that chemicals are put into meat before it leaves the
factory to cancel out all the other hormones, drugs, and other chemicals that
have been part of the cow's entire life? I've heard of many studies where that
is not the case at all. In fact, the use of hormones in poultry is banned--is
it because hormones don't transfer to humans, or because they do? Though meat
from cows doesn't need to be hormone-free... does it mean it's organic, and
that the cow was fed the way it would be normally? I don't think so.

In your case, what about the possibility that since corn is almost exclusively
used to feed cows even though it's not their normal food, shows that it must
provide some benefit to the owners, one of which may be that the cows grow
fatter from the same amount of corn versus the same amount of another plant?
That would be one example of a situation where a bad trait can be developed
for those who eat corn and for carnivores who eat that meat, without
chemicals. Thanks!

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mattmaroon
By it he meant the cow's diet I think. Hormones might show up, but just as you
can't chemically tell the difference between an organic vegetable and one
raised solely on Miracle grow, you probably can't distinguish the meat of a
free-range cow from one that ate nothing but corn.

I don't know that corn makes cows fatter, it's just a cheaper source of food.
I'm pretty sure it allows you to grow significantly more cattle on a given
amount of land. I could be wrong though. Given that I can hear them mooing
every morning when I step outside you'd think I would know more, but I don't.

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fub4r
If I read the article correctly it pretty much says that you can distinguish
the meat of a free-range cow from one that ate nothing but corn.

~~~
mattmaroon
Ha, you can tell right where I clicked away.

