After watching King Corn, I found myself even more intrigued with the food we consume. Combined with the knowledge I gained from The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the food around me became very disappointing. My poptarts, my cookies, my yogurt – all contain corn. Corn here, corn there – honestly I was this close to becoming vegan in the hopes of being healthy, but then I realized everything they eat has corn in it too. So how is one supposed to be healthy in this world that King Corn and The Omnivore’s Dilemma depict? Before all of this, I could have gone “organic” but since that no longer has meaning what am I left with? I could drop the basic junk foods – chips, soda, twinkies, and poptarts – all filled with high fructose corn syrup. There goes a chunk of the teenage diet. I could eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but then I remembered that the shine on the fruits that makes them stand out in the stores are created by yet another corn substance. Meat’s out of the question because the cow or pig it came from was probably fed with grain, feed, etc… otherwise known as corn. After seeing what happens to the cow due to corn, I’m not so sure I want to do that. So what am I to do? Is it possible to live a cruelty-free, corn-free lifestyle in today’s world? As King Corn and The Omnivore’s Dilemma have shown me, corn dominates the food industry. There are billions of pounds of it being produced in a tiny portion of the country. Salads are always an option but then again the dressing that I adore wouldn’t fit the “corn-free” requirement. So that eliminates almost everything, except water. But I know someone is going to find a way to associate corn with that too. So in order to live a corn-free world, I must not eat or consume anything, wonderful. Corn has the ability to hold my diet hostage. So it as it seems the other options seem very bleak, I think that I will embrace my poptarts, and simply accept the fact that a corn-free lifestyle would involve me being anorexic and extremely unhappy.
So what are we supposed to do about this situation? We cannot go cold turkey off corn. Farmers would lose their jobs and we would be left with nothing to eat. Our dependence on corn is so great that its hard to change. When we discussed the farm bill in class, it showed me the amount of money invested in corn. From here, it seems like the situation is a bit hopeless. We could slowly ease ourselves off corn, but the fact of the matter is, not enough people know about this growing problem. And now I wonder if that is better; Is ignorance bliss?
