KING CORN

Feckless(FP): What do you think of that documentary we saw last night?

Oddvark(OC): It was a little corny for my taste.

FP: I'm going to try to forget you said that. Oddvark and I watched a documentary last night entitled King Corn. The entire documentary was devoted to the subject of corn.

OC: You never seen so much corn in your life.

FP: I thought King Corn was entertaining, educational and thought provoking.

OC: I liked the part when they filmed the hole in that steer's stomach. The narrator just reached in and started taking the corn meal right out of the cow's stomach. It was fascinating.

FP: That was just one of the amazing scenes in this documentary film. I kind of liked the footage of all the farm machinery and explanation of how each contraption works. The filmakers were able to plant 31,000 seeds on an acre of land in approximately 18 minutes. I think that is incredible.

OC: I bet most people don't realize that a large proportion of their own hair is composed of corn.

FP: That's right. A scientist in a university lab conducted some sort of spectography on a strand of the filmakers hair and showed that the majority of its molecular content was identical to that of corn. The scientist explained that was due to the amount of corn in the average American diet. You see, we don't just eat corn-on-the-cob. Corn gets into our systems in a number of ways: beef, pork, chicken, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, etc. More than half the feed consumed by farm animals is now comprised of corn and corn biproducts.

OC: That's right. In fact, the filmakers point out that beef cattle get a lot of stomach ulcers because the sugar in the corn ferments and turns into acid before the cattle can completely digest it. This is one of the reasons why the cattle have to take so many antibiotics. The other reason is that in feed lots, the cattle are just shuffling around in each other's waste all day long. All they do in the feed lot is eat and poop.

FP: You've got a lot in common with those beef steers Oddvark.

OC: That's true. I really empathized with those beefs. I don't like to be penned up either. I like plenty of room to roam.

FP: Those feed lots didn't look too appetizing.

OC: The expert the filmakers interviewed said those cattle produce a meat that is almost 70% fat.

FP: That is why those steaks and hamburgers are so tasty. If the cattle were grass fed they would only produce a fraction of that fat. The difference is comprised of corn.

OC: I sure would like to go ski-boarding on one of those corn mountains in Iowa.

FP: Yeah, that did look like fun. We don't want to give the whole film away. Our readers will want to check out all the details for themselves.

OC: True. This is one of the most interesting films that I've seen in a long time. Corn-on-the-cob is one of my favorite foods. I will never eat another ear of corn without thinking of this film.