In his 5th and 6th chapter of Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan discusses the role of corn in processed foods and the impact it has on our society. To someone who doesn’t know much about food ingredients, it is a surprising fact that most of the corn we digest looks and tastes nothing like corn. The reason why our nation produces so much corn is because of its multiple uses in our society. With modern technology and an understanding of chemistry, corn is sent to “wet mills” where it is transformed into artificial sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup. The popularity of processed foods came hand in hand with the ability to turn corn into an artificial sweetener. Pollan describes our generation as the republic of fat. One would think that artificial sweetener would take the place of sugar since it is cheaper to produce. However this didn’t happen. Pollan informs us that we ate just as much sugar if not more on top of our incredibly high consumption of artificial sugars. Pollan correlates this issue to the fact that our generation is faced with so many health issues. Adult onset diabetes’s name was changed to type two diabetes because it began to affect children due to the high intake of sugar. In fact, 1 out of 3 children born after year 2000 will be affected with the disease.
Technological advancements are often thought of as improvements to the world. However, often the benefits of technology mask the harmful side effects they produce. High fructose corn syrup was a great invention that has enabled our society to become what it is today. However, 1 in 3 children born after year 2000 will be affected with type 2 diabetes. That is an unacceptable percentage. The food industry needs to spend more time working on health risks instead of doing anything to make a profit.
1) Is our society too dependent on high fructose corn syrup to change?
2) What solutions do you think would work to help our society become more health conscious?
High fructose corn syrup is definitely abundant in almost all of our food, but I do not think we are stuck being dependent on it. You can see in stores a growing availability of products made with real sugar, which is a funny concept for this to be "new," since that was the old way foods were made. People blame the corn syrup, but it is our societies culture to blame. We need to make it known that it isn't the corn syrup thats "bad for us." It is our overindulgence in these abundent, sweet products.
ReplyDelete