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The Ethical Epicure: Is our country producing way too much food?
Laurel Gladden  | For The New Mexican
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Food/Is-our-country-producing-way-too-much-

food-

6/30/2009 - 7/1/09
Although corn is a food most people associate with New Mexico, our state is
not one of the nation's top producers; yet corn is everywhere in our
regional diet. Tortilla chips take the place of bread in the baskets on
many of our tables, and pretty much every New Mexican restaurant in town
offers some traditional corn-based fare: tamales, posole or one of any
number of dishes made using corn tortillas. Where might that corn come
from?

With the locus of the American corn crop on my mind, I recently sat down to
watch King Corn, the 2007 documentary directed by Aaron Woolf written by
and starring Ellis and Ian Cheney. The filmmakers moved to the tiny farming
town of Greene, Iowa, where they rented an acre of land and all the
necessary supplies to grow corn; they hoped to track where in America —
and in our food system — their bushels of corn ended up. Much of what
they learned over the course of that year will not be groundbreaking news
to anyone who has read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, but it's an
entertaining and personal way of presenting the data Pollan dishes out.

What surprised me the most were the mountains of excess corn piling up in
Greene. For decades in the early 20th century, the federal government
restricted what and how much farmers could grow, but in the 1970s, Earl
Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Nixon and Ford,
"revolutionized" agriculture policy in the U.S., encouraging farmers to
grow as much of certain crops (like corn) as they could. This surplus makes
corn a cheap source of food. It also makes staying in the black tough for
farmers, so the government provides subsidies; but that's another subject.

Ellis and Cheney learn that more than half of their crop — and of the
mountains of corn in Greene — will likely end up being used as feed for
cattle. Though cows traditionally feed on grass, most cattle farms in
America feed their livestock a diet that can, in some instances, consist of
as much as 90 percent corn, largely because that grain is a cheap and
concentrated source of calories. The problem is that cows aren't equipped
to digest that much corn. It throws off the pH level in their stomachs,
creating a condition known as acidosis, which leads to ulcers, a host of
other maladies, and even death. Consequently, most cattle feed must be
treated with low doses of antibiotics.

About 5 percent of Cheney and Ellis's crop would be directed to the
corn-based sweetener industry, which grew out of the need to "derive the
greatest economic benefit" from all that extra corn. That industry's main
commodity, high-fructose corn syrup, is a low-cost sugar substitute that
has dominated the sweetener market since the late 1980s. By now, we've all
heard plenty about HFCS, and its prevalence in our diet. Though we
Americans now eat less sugar than we once did, our consumption of sweet
stuff in general has increased approximately 30 percent — thanks largely
to HFCS.

Ellis and Cheney interview a representative from the Corn Refiners
Association, who talks about her industry and its "complex innovative
system that makes ... foods available to us in such a variety of choices
for such low prices." They visit Butz, who replies, in response to the
suggestion that America just might be producing too much food (corn in
particular), "That's the basis of our affluence now — the fact that we
spend less on food. It's America's best-kept secret. We feed ourselves with
approximately 16 or 17 percent of our take-home pay." Our decisions to
raise cattle on food they're not biologically equipped to digest, to grow
more of a certain crop than we need just so we can have cheap food, and to
create a whole industry to make money off that surplus without regard to
the nutritional and dietary repercussions — it all seems so, well ...
greedy.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don't think corn is bad. What does give me the
creeps is the ubiquity of industrialized corn and its derivatives in our
diet. Therefore, I herewith challenge myself (and anyone else who wants to
join me) to a month of the No Corn Diet. This isn't an original idea —
other people have tried it, and there are plenty of people in the U.S. with
corn allergies who have to avoid corn whether they like it or not. I want
to get an idea, though, of what it's like to live maize-free in New Mexico
for a while. It won't be easy. A No Corn Diet means, of course, no tamales
or posole or chips and salsa or popcorn at the movies. Obviously nothing
containing HFCS, but I don't eat many foods that contain that anyway. No
ketchup or barbecue sauce, unless I make it myself. Avid label readers will
recognize maltodextrin, sorbic acid, xanthan gum and lecithin, all of which
can be — and commonly are — derived from corn. My favorite granola
contains cornstarch. Your toothpaste might contain sorbitol, which can be
produced from the corn sugar dextrose. And while I realize you don't
actually eat toothpaste (or at least I hope you don't), it's interesting to
note the unexpected places where corn sneaks into your daily life.

The commitment to being corn-free will encourage me to look further into
the source of what I'm eating. Some of my favorite wholesome foods happen
to be corn-based. Many eggs, for example, come from hens fed a diet
consisting at least partially of corn. I'll miss one of the quintessential
pleasures of summer: sweet, juicy golden kernels munched right off the cob.
I'm not sure I'll change toothpaste or shampoo brands, since this column is
really about eating. And I don't mean to suggest that we should all
eliminate corn from our diets or that doing so will cure the problems with
our food system. I just want to see what life is like without corn for a
little while — but not until after July 4th, of course.

Laurel Gladden is a freelance writer and editor living in Santa Fe. Contact
her at the.ethical.epicure@gmail.com.