Children of the Corn

We just watched this amazing movie that you should get out of the library. It's called King Corn and it's about, well, everything. It's about civilization, about food, about that crazy state, and people, mostly fat people, which is to say people. It's about everything. And it all comes from corn, which comes from oil. They didn't really talk much about oil but that's okay, you can't cover everything in a film.

If you were to have your hair analyzed you would find that most of the carbon in your body (which you got from food) comes from corn. We eat corn in everything: pop, all processed foods (that's right, all!), cheap meat is fed corn, and any sugar is probably made using cheap corn syrup. It's pretty much impossible to avoid unless you are going to grow your own food and only purchase whole foods. And even then, who isn't tempted?

I actually called Smuckers (the jam company, likely owned by Lockheed-Martin) the other day because I naively wanted to know if their sugar was made from sugar beets (genetically modified) or cane sugar (not genetically modified yet). Little did I know that their sugar comes from corn (genetically modified). So as I informed Linda on the phone, there'll be no more Smuckers on the kitchen table and probably no more commercial jam since it will all contain fructose from corn because it is so cheap.

And why is it so cheap? Because the government subsidizes corn production. In the film, most farmers (if you can call them that) post a loss until the subsidies come through. So the only reason we have a crazy, deadly, stupid, death food system is because the government supports it. You'd think that in Canada, with nationalized (for now) healthcare that this would be discouraged. Recognizing this fact, I don't have high hopes that universal healthcare will come south of the border anytime soon. Good luck President Obama.

The only good news is that this generation is likely to live shorter and much more painful lives than our parents and their parents. Serves us right for being so stupid. So hopefully some humans will die. But that's the only good news and it's kind of twisted.

But check out King Corn if you can. But if you still can't do without the grocery store and your daily dose of cola then maybe you should just get back to the television. I'm sure something good is on. Perhaps another Michael Jackson retrospective?