Drinking Diabetes
Today in class, we watched King Corn, a 2007 documentary about, well, corn. After discovering a substantial amount of carbon in their hair, they were told that it's origin was corn. They moved to Iowa to find out what this was all about. Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis decided to grow an acre of corn and attempted to track it's journey from the field to.. who knows where!?
It turned out to be impossible to track the corn, but they were able to find out where the majority of it goes. Over 50% goes into animal feed and ~30% is exported for the production of ethanol. But what about the rest of it?
I think we can all take a stab at where a majority of the remainder of corn grown in the United States goes. This ingredient is in practically every packaged food we can get our hands on! You've guessed it: High Fructose Corn Syrup! A significant portion of which goes into the sugary-sweet beverages that many Americans consume every day--soda! …or as I like to call it: "liquid candy."
So this got me thinking…
Are we addicted to drinking sugary-syrupy bubbly sweet beverages? I'd say so considering the average American consumes 45 gallons of soda per year!
According to the article posted below, average soda consumption has been steadily increasing over the past 30 years. According to the documentary, this certainly seems to have a correlation to the stark increase in corn production, as well as increases in rates of obesity AND diabetes. Coincidence? I think not..
No comments:
Post a Comment