Reading Response 7b

Chapter 6, 7, 8, and 9 10/11/10

We eat corn a lot more then we think we do. Corn is in almost all processed foods. The way it gets into all of our food without us being able to recognize it is by going through a wet mill. The wet mill brakes down the corn so that each part of it can be used differently. The three important things are the skin, the germ, and the endosperm. After the corn has gone through the mill and all of the things that the mill does to it, it is easy to take apart. For example the germ may be separated from the rest of the kernel and then squeezed for corn oil. This made me wonder if they use the empty germ or if they just throw it away. A very popular ingredient in many foods is corn starch. What corn starch is, is basically the rest of the kernel crushed up into mush and then dried until it becomes the powder which is corn starch. Corn starch was able to be turned into the sugars glucose and fructose. You'll definitely see those in a lot of processed foods. Processed foods are very bad for farmers because they sell things in wholes for less and the big companies sell very spread out amounts for more. What I mean is if a farmer sells a cob of corn for lets say a dollar, then the company brakes the corn up and puts it into all of there food and sells that same cob of corn for maybe four times as much as the farmer.

I have always been told since I was little that vegetables are healthy and will help you grow big and strong. Well corn is a vegetable but it seems like corn has become a problem here. As I perviously stated corn is in everything so thats means it is in those fatty foods that don't do to good for your health. Corn tends to have a lot of calories in its products. So with more calories in almost all processed food obesity is bound to rise a lot. This may be a problem but I personally don't think that corn in processed foods is really the problem. If people cared they would watch what they are eating and have the processed food with the corn, but also keep a good diet. Maybe they wouldn't be so obese if they ate less.

Humans are very picky creatures. We have such a wide variety of food that it becomes a problem what and what not to eat. Unlike humans most animals eat only a couple of things, or maybe even one thing. But thats also why the human population is so big, since we can eat almost anything we can spread and live all over the world. A huge impact on what people eat is the taste of a certain food. Its basically what makes humans picky eaters. If we didn't have any preference of taste then we would eat anything that is there to eat just to make us full like every other animal. But I think that it also has to do with the availability of food and the choice of food. I think that the term "beggars can't be choosier's" perfectly explains this in a way because if your begging for food and starving you aren't going to turn down food that you may not like. But if you aren't begging then you can have any food that you want if your in the right place.

What is the biggest most popular food chain on earth? McDonald's of course. But not only that it is very unhealthy. Especially the chicken nuggets. The chicken nuggets from McDonald's have 38 different ingredients, many of which come from corn. Some of the ingredients in a chicken nugget were never even meant to be eaten. Chemicals that keep the food from going bad or looking unappealing. These chemicals aren't harmful enough to kill you but they are sure not good for you. What I now realized is that all fast food really does taste the same. I've never really thought about it enough but it all leaves that kind of nasty fast food taste in your mouth that makes you want to get more just so you can taste the good part of your meal again.