There is corn in my beer???

This was pretty hard, seeing as how I already have to check food labels often for any meat product, and also just can't eat meat in general. But that is just with the food that I eat – not to mention the things I drank, the medication I took. I thought a lot about a good friend of mine who is allergice to peanuts, and how hard it must be to have to check labels of everything you eat, and how additionally hard it must be when your food is prepared for you, so you are never really sure of what it contains. And THEN, I started thinking about labels, and what is actually in food. A huge percentage of the list on the corn allergen website contains words that I've never heard of, ending in -ine, -ate, acid, etc. What is all this crap? Why is it in our food? How does corn end up in vanilla, or baking soda, or confectioner's sugar? It doesn't belong there!

This was a really hard challenge, nearly impossible, seeing as how even the cab that I drove home in had corn in it. But, it brought full circle everything that we've learned about the contemporary US food system. When we can really cash in on a commodity, like corn, we abuse it to the max. There isn't any reason for corn to be in everything we eat – its hardly a vegetable, and it has little nutritional value. But corporations can make a lot of money on it, and pump millions of dollars into aid campaigns about how high-fructose corn syrup is “just like sugar” (see http://www.sweetsurprise.com/) . Our food system has absolutely nothing to do with growing and selling food that humans need to live a healthy life. Just like every other aspect of our consumer society, it has become a way to make the consumer ignorant and encourage bad habits.