Destroying my Corny Dreams

I’ve always joked around with my parents that my goal is to live to be 109 because it is my favorite number. Each time it comes up, they laugh at me, and everyone around me makes a claim about how they would never want to live that long. I persist and tell them that I do, that I want to be the old lady hosting wheel chair races down the halls of my old folk’s home. Nonetheless, the information that is provided in the film Corn King tells me that my dreams of old folk’s wheelchair racing are more limited than I ever expected. In fact, it states that for the first time in American history, my life expectancy is shorter than that of my parents. That is pretty scary.

What’s even scarier is that the reasoning for the shortened life expectancy, corn, is mass produced both by and for our nation every day. What’s scary is the fact that the very product that is putting the health of my generation in jeopardy is something that we can control. This means that we have become the cause of our own demise by becoming and remaining a nation that is based on commerce, where quantity has become more important than quality.

One thing the documentary mentioned that I found interesting was the way that corn is a part of our everyday lives when we don’t even realize it. When thinking about the ingredients that would go into an oreo, for example, corn and corn products would not be the first components that would enter my mind.  Yet, corn and corn products are an ingredient in oreos, and in most of the other foods that we eat. I find this to be pretty disturbing because no food, not even a vegetable, should be that predominate in a healthy diet.

The next question is how we stop all this corniness and start getting serious about the fuel that we put into our bodies. After all, corn has become a dominant industry in our society, and changing the nature of the business even in small ways would affect our economy as well as the lives we lead everyday.  In my opinion, a shift in the market would be beneficial in numerous ways. I think that shifting to a food system that was not based on corn but on locally grown markets would not only make us eat healthier as a nation, but also serve as a medium for more jobs, tie communities together, and remind us as a country that quantity and speed are not always the best influences on the way we live our lives. I feel that this has to start first, by raising levels of education and awareness, and that from there necessary campaigning and movements should lead the way in to a happier, healthier, and not so corny America.