When Corn Becomes King Analysis

Improved Essays
The second problem with food production is that there are too many processed foods and corn products that cause harm to our health. In the article, “When a Crop Becomes King,” this issue is thoroughly discussed. The author of the mentioned article, Michael Pollan, states, “Our entire food supply has undergone a process of ‘cornification’... in the US most of the corn we consume is invisible, having been heavily processed or passed through food animals before it reaches us” (Pollan). The majority of the food items Americans consume contain corn or corn products, and it has gotten to the point where we eat corn without even realizing it. Corn is so widely demanded by food companies, that it completely took over; it is used more than any other

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    This chapter talks about the progression of eating whole foods to processed/refined foods that contain sugars, fats and salts. He also talks about how the western diet has come about quickly and we are eating a lot of corn in addition to our processed foods. Part III Chapter 1: This chapter discusses how science of foods needs to be reduced and we should eat food, not too much and mostly plants. Chapter 2: This chapter is the author giving his advice on what to eat and not to eat. He tip is to not eat anything with more than 5 ingredients or eat items with corn syrup.…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” the part that stuck to me the most was the part about “how corn took over America”. In the passage it talks about how most of what we eat is made of corn. The author states “Supermarkets look like they contain a huge variety of food. The shelves are stuffed with thousands of different items. There are dozens of different soups and salad dressings, cases stuffed with frozen dinners and ice cream and meat.…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When European settlers arrived at the New World, corn was the quintessence that allowed them to survive. Now, due to its versatile nature, the crop is in almost every food product one could imagine; even in a main component in our plastic. In this section, Pollan dissects Not only does the author address the moral issues of the development of corn but the explains the chemical detriments the planting of corn causes. After watching the documentary Food Inc., a film in which Michael Pollan was a key interviewee, I was horrified by the highly technical method in which our food is processed.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “These days the nation's nearly 80 million-acre field of corn rolls across the countryside like a second great lawn” - {Pollan} When we have all this extra corn we have to find ways to use it, that’s the hard part, they did find a way however. “10 percent of the calories Americans consume now come from corn sweeteners; the figure is 20 percent for many children.” - {Pollan}. I feel Pollan suggested that we should eat less corn, because of the effects it can have on your body.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Michael Pollan expresses the need to address and fix the problem with the western diet. He starts by reminding the readers of all the nutritional theories that try to explain the health diseases that are affecting American people. The author challenges these theories by placing the blame on the health and food companies, because they create new products and medicines instead of looking at the root causes. Although an easy solution would be to not eat as much processed foods, the author points out how even nature things like soil condition and livestock feed can make that task harder than it should be. Michael Pollan suggests that the consumers are part of the problem because they do not spend enough time or money on our food preparation because…

    • 158 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Flavr Savr Research Paper

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Ninety percent of feed grain production is due to dramatically changed corn (techrepublic). Industrial livestock benefits from this feed grown by farmers in the midwest over eighty million acres (techrepublic). Corn is also produced as the main ingredient in some foods we use everyday such as sweeteners and corn oil (techrepublic). Crop yield monitors invented in 1990 through technology has caused the production of corn to dramatically increase in the last twenty-five years (techrepublic).…

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pollan writes, “ Most researchers trace America’s rising rates of obesity to the 1970s. This was, of course, the same decade that America embraced a cheap-food farm policy and began dismantling forty years of programs designed to prevent overproduction” (Pollan 285). Pollan argued that the reason America began being unhealthy was because of the fact that America embraced overproduction of food. Although the most of the food produced with corn syrup are good and cheaper, it is unhealthy. In America 17.5 billion pounds of high fructose corn syrup is being…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Nutritional Guest Speaker In American, currently and a few other countries that have a decent economic system is currently battling an epidemic. This epidemic is spreading like a weed and there is no controlling it. All of it starts with a seed from company who is paying lobbyists and federal candidates off named, Monsanto. This company has a patent on seeds that have been genetically modified with herbicides and pesticides. One of the corn seed this company sells is Roundup ready.…

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the world that we live today, food industries produces low end fat products that are slowly becoming the norm in today’s society. Many consumers do not understand the process of how their food is made, through nor do consumers know where their food originates from. When consumers are exposed to advertisements and commercials, they are drawn into the products that big food companies are trying to sell. In the short essay “The Pleasures of Eating” by Wendell Berry, Berry talks about how consumers do not know where their food comes from and how people are consuming foods with toxic chemicals. In “When a Crop Becomes King” by Michael Pollan, Pollan states that companies are putting corn related products into everyday foods, which are leading into bad eating habits.…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Meridian imbalance comes about due to a dense or low level energetic vibration. This is influenced by a number of factors: How we think and how we feel - negative thoughts and feelings are denser and lower energetic vibrations - So if we are unhappy, angry, and thinking negative thoughts and so on - our biology (and meridians) is affected by our stories and feelings. The quality of our food - poor quality food being man made, artificial and treated with pesticides vibrates at a denser lower level - once we ingest these low quality foods we lower our vibration and our energy becomes denser and the movement becomes slow and impaired, this affects the balance of our meridian system. Our immediate environment (do we live in a stressful, noisy crowded…

    • 182 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This includes children dying of E. Coli, and it is outrageous that the companies responsible being allowed to carry on producing. It’s known that food with cheaper cost tends to be the dangerous food. Since, they are trying to minimize the cost of minimizing the cost of the foods that their animals are eating. E. Coli has been a trending disease and that is because a lot of manufactures assemble their products with corn. They had found that corn has been positive for E. Coli yet, it is part of the diet that the animals within their factory farms are eating.…

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Plight of the Bumble Bee With the demand for food constantly increasing, modern farmers have taken on new practices to keep up with demands. Some of these practices include genetic modification of plant species and animals, destroying habitats to make room for farm land, and spraying toxic pesticides to keep insects from consuming crops. Some would argue that these practices are necessary for keeping up with todays food demands, while others may argue that their negative side effects are not worth the bounty of food they help supply. Unfortunately, not many consumers know what it takes to produce the food for their everyday meals.…

    • 1779 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Not only do monoculture farms use harsh fertilizers but they also use pesticides because these fields are extremely attractive to weeds and pests. That is why using chemicals on the food we consume isn’t the healthiest option for us. In Pollan’s essay, Unhappy Meals he states, “The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. ”(Pollan 13) This low-quality food being produced by industrial farming heavily impacts our health and that is why it shouldn't be about increasing quantity and reducing prices but about if it is healthy for us…

    • 1085 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Community Of Interest

    • 1976 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Step 1: Identify Community of Interest The community we are interested in focusing on is Vanderburgh County. Attending the University of Evansville, we are well-aware that Vanderburgh county suffers from the overconsumption of processed foods. We believe this is a viable task.…

    • 1976 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Where does our food come from? Our food comes from hard working farmers and large agricultural companies who supply us with food. Now, the question is, is it safe? In order to find out if our food products are safe, we must begin with the definition of agriculture. Agriculture is the creating of crops and livestock products (Janick, Altieri, and Colwell) and agriculture means the same in every nation.…

    • 1348 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays