This documentary reveals some disturbing facts about our food supply. Over the last thirty-five years we have turned our national network of family farms into an industrialized farming system made up of highly-mechanized super farms. The major crop in this system is corn - but not the sweet corn that we're accustomed to eating at the dinner table. The corn produced in America by the billions of bushels is feed corn, inedible as harvested, but readily processed into three valuable products: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), cattle feed, and ethanol.
HFCS has replaced most of the sugar formerly found in processed food, in everything from breakfast cereal to bread to soft drinks, and is essentially empty calories. The cattle feed is fed to cattle in large containment feed lots, and while the cattle are being force-fed corn to get them to slaughter weight in 180 days, the process results in a condition called acidosis, which is treated with antibiotics - in fact 70% of all the antibiotics used in America go into our beef cattle. Corn-fed cattle produce a highly marbled beef which is 65% fat by caloric content. The bottom line is that thirty-five years ago our free-range, grass-fed beef contained much more protein, much less fat, and fewer antibiotics (and hormones) than it does today. And given the quantity of HFCS we consume, it is no coincidence that one in eight Americans now have type II diabetes - either diagnosed or undiagnosed. So why are we doing this to ourselves? We do it because it's cheap. HFCS is much cheaper than cane or beet sugar. Corn-fed beef is much cheaper than free-range, grass-fed beef. If you're concerned about the food you eat, and you appreciated Food, Inc., you don't want to miss King Corn.
Label: documentary
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 70/100
Tomatometer (critics=96, viewers=77)
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