Documentary Review: King Corn

On the weekends I like to watch documentaries. There are so many great ones (and some crummy ones) out there and I like to learn. So I'm going to start incorporating some to share with you.

Today I watched King Corn, and per the trailer summary it is about:

King Corn tells the story of two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. As the film unfolds, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-ubiquitous grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they learn raises questions about how we eat—and how we farm.

Some snippets I took away from this:

- Rancher says- no grass, cheap feed, confinement lots means cows are "market weight" & killed in 5 months vs years.

- Rancher: America wants and demands cheap food.

- Professor: ground beef isn't really meat. It's fat disguised as meat.

- Predominantly the food/corn grown is to feed... Cattle. Which actually is fatal to them.

- HFCS, obviously, was created and is so prevalent because the government pays farmers to grow an excess of corn. This started in the 1970s.

- Our agricultural yield "improvements" have degraded the nutritional aspect. Basically we're growing acres of sweetener not food

- 1 in 8 New Yorkers have diabetes (many undiagnosed) much if this contributed to soda consumption

- 1 soda a day doubles your risk of developing diabetes.

- "We subsidize the Happy Meals but we don't subsidize the healthy foods"

The more I learn about the food supply and government subsidies, the more appalled I am.

Learn more:

King Corn site - http://www.kingcorn.net/

King Corn YouTube Channel

More free documentaries - http://www.freedocumentaries.org/