What is in your food?

Just watched a very interesting and eye opening documentary called Food Inc. about the current state of the food industry and how a hand full of companies are controlling the entire food chain. Even though the movie shows the state of the food industry in the USA, I would assume a similar system exists in more of the developed nations.

I was amazed to know that one of the basic ingredient of 90% of the food in the super market shelf is “corn”. Yes, you heard me right. Corn is used as a basic currency in the food industry. It is even fed to cows (which are actually herbivores and eat grass) so that they gain more weight, quicker. The downside is that corn causes e-coli to grow in the cows stomach which then comes out via the excrement and spreads to other healthy cows and finally ends up in the ground beef that is used to make the hamburgers in the fast food chains.

In fact it is the low cost system of the fast food chains that encourages this kind of corn based food chain and is leading to a whole slew of problems including environmental damage on top of the human health cost.

I recommend you check out the Food Inc website and watch the movie if possible. The take away from the movie is to start thinking about what is in your food, buy locally produced food, stay away from fast food restaurants and eat healthy food and more…