Not news for those of us with corn allergies

Corey Jo recently recommended that I read some Michael Pollan for fun once I'm done with all this essay writing business (still four to go!) Apparently he's going to be in Portland and Seattle. (Info at the bottom of the post, for those of you in Seattle)

Anyway, here's a quote from a news article about his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's interesting in general, but also think about it from the point of view of poor little old me, who can't have corn in any form without getting a monster migraine for days. It's not comforting, but it's also no surprise if you've ever tried to avoid corn. It's everywhere in every form in every food. Just one more reason to avoid processed foods, candy and soft drinks.

C'mon people, 66 pounds of high fructose corn syrup, per person, per year!? Gross.

Our food pyramid teeters on petrochemicals and corn syrup
Oregonian, Sunday, April 30, 2006
JOHN FOYSTON

"When I started trying to follow the industrial food chain . . . I expected that my investigation would lead me to a wide variety of places," Pollan writes in "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals." "(But) at the very end of these food chains, I invariably found myself in almost exactly the same place: a farm field in the American Corn Belt. The great edifice of variety and choice that is the American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation . . . dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn."

The costs of a food chain founded upon cheap energy, chemicals and an oversupply of cheap corn go beyond the oil consumed. Our corn monoculture is a disaster for almost everyone. American farmers are going broke, our soil, water and health are being degraded, cattle live in vast compounds eating food they were never evolved to digest, and our citizenry grows ever fatter as we eat our way through the corn glut.

(Little is eaten as yellow kernels. Instead, we eat it as ingredients and sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup: each of us swills 66 pounds of HFCS a year.)

The glut is a boon for corporations such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, which sell the chemicals, feed and seed, who buy and process the corn, slaughter the livestock and transport food. And it's a boon for the corn itself, Pollan says.

"Of all the species that have figured out how to thrive in a world dominated by Homo sapiens, surely no other has succeeded more spectacularly -- has colonized more acres and bodies -- than Zea mays, the grass that domesticated its domesticator."

IN SEATTLE:
May 12th
KUOW Weekday, 94.9 FM
9:00-10:00 AM interview with Steve Scher on KUOW's Weekday
AND
Omnivore's Dilemma Reading
www.thirdplacebooks.com
6:30 PM, free reading at
Third Place Books
17171 Bothell Way NE.
For more information call 206-366-3333.