I've loved corn since I was a kid. In Mexico, when you bought corn, it most of the time came with a green corn worm. My brother and I loved the worms, it was a cute pest! We probably enjoyed playing with the worm as much as eating the corn.Corn is a staple in many families' dinners all over the world, and corn is good. It has vitamin C and A, iron, and fiber. But what about when it stops being a whole food? Oh no... we get corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup.
Credit: Natalie DeeCorn syrup is everywhere. Why? Because it's a cheap and serves multiple purposes: thickener, sweetener, and humectant (an ingredient that retains moisture and thus maintains a food's freshness). In the United States, cane sugar quotas raise the price of sugar; hence, domestically produced corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup are less expensive alternatives that are often used in American-made processed and mass-produced foods, candies, soft drinks and fruit drinks to help control cost. In a nutshell, using corn syrup instead of sugar lower expenses, therefore raising company's profits. Companies main purpose is t make money, but it's sad when it takes a toll on people's health.
Corn is also fed to cows and other livestock, because (as I learned in Food, Inc.) it's cheap, fattens the animals quickly. and allows for year round beef production in colder climates. The fatter corn fed cows have a more marbled meat than grass fed cows and this is what the consumer in today’s beef market has come to know as the standard.
Though “corn finishing” produces bigger, fatter cows in less time, corn is not a natural diet for a cow. Because of this unnatural corn rich diet, some unhealthy side effects take place. Most notably, a higher incidence of E. coli O157:H7 occurs in corn fed beef than in grass fed beef. In 1998, a Cornell University study revealed that cows fed on a natural grass diet had at least 80% less E. coli O157:H7 than grain fed cows.
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