King Corn

We had a hard time understanding where this movie was going for the first half hour besides growing an acre of corn in Iowa. It got better, though, much better, and I think these guys stumbled on just about the hugest story of our food, and Food, Inc. was just a spin-off (unless its just common knowledge). This is the food movie. (Aside from this gem).

These two document filmers very politely interview a farmer and his wife in Iowa, and the farmer's wife just out says, "Yeah, we're growing a bunch of crap." They were blown away. "Crap?" The farmer's wife says she can't use it, maybe she'd grind it up to make a little cornmeal, but she hardly does that.

This corn is genetically modified and breeded and its easy to get a high yield. Millions of dollars have been spent researching uses for it. Now its subsidized. Yet, its inedible to beast and man. Its feeds our beef, and anyone my age has probably only had corn-fed beef, and no grass-fed beef in their life.

A little over half of the corn in Iowa goes to confinement feed lots where they bring in young calves and feed them for 140-150 days and then butcher them. "They may as well slaughter them after six months, as the cows are going to die anyway." The corn diet will actually kill a cow in six months.

A corn-fed diet which is high in starch, with a confinement lot where they can't move, makes the cows gain weight quickly and can they can be slaughtered much faster than grass-fed cows. The resulting ground beef from corn-fed cows is full of antibiotics put in the cows so they can survive the diet, and their muscle tissue looks more like fat tissue. There are 9 grams of saturated fat vs. 1.3 grams saturated fat per serving in corn-fed vs. grass-fed beef. "Its really not meat, its fat. Sixty-five percent of the calories come from fat." One farmer of a confinement feed-lot states "If America wanted grass-fed beef, we would give them grass-fed beef."

I have two pages of notes of knowledge this film has, so there's lots more. Available at WSU library. I recommend viewing this.