Children of the Corn

Corn, it’s all around us. It’s in the food we eat and the sweet beverages we drink. It’s in us, we are corn. Well whats wrong with that? Whats wrong with having most of our diet consist of corn? It’s a grain, isn’t it? Well, sure it is but like anything else, too much of a good thing is bad and in corn’s case, we’ve gone far beyond just a little too much.

Grab some processed packaged food you have in your home and just read the list of ingredients. Besides all of the multi-syllable ingredients you’d normally find, I’m sure you’d spot one interesting ingredient appearing consistently. That one ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. Ah corn syrup, a food manufacturer’s dream come true! It preserves the food, it sweetens it and best of all, it cheapens it! Using HFCS is a great way to manufacture food for the masses. Well, at least for the food companies, it is. For us, HFCS is nothing but fat-inducing, pure corn-sugar. It has no real nutritional value and just like real sugar, will cause a whole series of heath problems like diabetes and obesity when over-consumed. And it’s very easy to over-consume when so much of the mass produced food on the market is made with it.

With the evidence pointing more and more to HFCS as the reason for our nation’s obesity epidemic, you would think that their use would be more regulated. You’d think that sugary drinks and snacks containing it would no longer be sold to our children at schools. You would think that cereal companies that market to children would avoid cramming their products with so much of the syrup. You would think that HFCS would get the same treatment cigarettes do today in America. However, the progress made to cut out HFCS-containing products out of the system has been minimal at best. This does not bode well for our nation’s children who don’t see the danger that HFCS poses to their health. We are raising children of the corn. Expect the national health nightmare to come full circle before long.