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Corn Michael Pollan Summary

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Michael Pollan begins his journey at a supermarket observing everything that is in the store. From the fresh vegetables that are spritzed every few moments and the processed foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to the non-edible items. His purpose is to find the origin of the items in the store. He is astonished when he finds out that a majority of the items that are in the market are made up of some form of corn. Corn is becoming more and more beneficial to everyone. Farmers use the corn to feed the cattle, manufactures use HFCS to produce the food, and we ingest the corn for either the sweet taste of the HFCS or for the nutrients that the corn provides for us.
Farmers have demonstrated a different way of feeding cattle and getting them to the desired weight for the slaughterhouse. They have figured out that when cattle are fed a majority of corn instead of grass, they gain the weight they need in a smaller amount of time. Corn is high in carbohydrates and thus cattle can reach slaughterhouse weight in as little as 14 weeks whereas grass fed cattle take up to 5 years to reach that weight. But there are also some health risks that come with this. Pollan explains that when cows are fed a large amount of corn, they can be …show more content…
We depend on these foods to give us the things that we need. Whether it be from drinking something or eating something. They both get digested the same. In Pollan’s journal, he states that corn whiskey was a popular and cheap drink that Americans has started to drink. He tells us that the rate of obesity due to diabetes and other health problems, is gaining in numbers. Pollan believes that since cattle are not adapted to eating corn, that we may become unadapt to eating these cattle. Bloating is a common aspect that farmers have to deal with when feeding corn to

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