Watched the Documentary “King Corn”

January 06, 2011 Filed in: Movies

Do you know where your food comes from? If you’ve seen the film Food Inc., you have an idea, and you probably realize that a huge portion of the American food supply comes from the agricultural crop we call corn. While Food Inc. touches on this topic for a bit, King Corn (available on Netflix streaming) goes over it through the eyes of two recent college grads. Upon discovering that their hair, which acts as a recorder for the food you consume, contains a huge proportion of corn, they decide to grow an acre of corn and trace it into our food system.

Some of the interesting bits:

-The corn they grow does not taste good. In fact, none of the farmers that grow this corn eat their own crops.
-A huge portion of this food goes to feeding cattle in feedlots. Sadly, if they did not slaughter the cattle, they would die anyway because of this diet.
-This genetically modified corn is designed to produce more starch, which is good for making high-fructose corn syrup.
-One of the turning points for the corn industry was when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz encouraged farmers to grow big.

People I look up to that were in this film:

-Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore’s Dilemma
-Loren Cordain, author of the Paleo Diet

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Watched the Documentary “King Corn”