Extra Credit -THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA

Chapter 5 - The Processing Plant: Making Complex Foods
In this chapter Michael Pollan investigates how corn is processed, i was very surprised to see how big of a staple corn is in our diets and most of it we don't even realize we are eating. Although most Americans don't actually eat a lot of corn, we consume it is ways most would not expect. Some of the many examples include the cattle we each such as chickens, turkeys, pigs, and the cows were are feed corn, many alcohols are made from corn, a lot of the fried foods we eat are cooked in corn oil and last but not least fossil fuels. More specifically corn enzymes are broken down carbohydrates that start of as a long chain of different organic compounds. Pollen also talked about how corn is found amongst most processed food; when reading the back of any product just look for glucose, fructose, maltodextrin and methanol, if you come across any of those just to name a few, think corn! Because so much corn is needed a lot of energy is used to keep up with the high demand, if a tractor is run about ten calories of fossil fuel is burned (that's a lot) that will only produce about a ton of corn, that may seem like a lot but not in the big picture. The most interesting thing i read in this chapter was about how the large corporations will straight out lie to the consumers and are able to get away with it, without any consciences. Its all a trick, if the cost of soy or corn goes up they (the company) will switch to cheaper ingredients (fats) but call it the "natural" stuff. If on the back of a box it says something like "contains one or more of the following..." listing three or more things they just don't want to be specific with which one they used, most times its the ingredients that cost the company the least amount of money to produce. The longer the list of ingredients on the back of the box means the less healthy is actually is. Cheaper products are used to re-create the final outcome. Overall there is not a lot of truth on the back of any box, they mix ingredients to make it appeal more to the consumer. Companies to not like to share there secrets because they don't want other people (companies) to steal their tricks.