A screaming rant about food

[ThomWV]

I eat a pretty simple county fare most of the time but I'm getting tired of this continuos diet of corn.

I'm sitting here typing with a Pepsi in front of me. Carbonated water and High Fruitrose Corn Syrup to keep me going for another few hours.

Last night we had a pork loin for dinner. Scrumptious with our own dried Rosemary. And what was I eating, a pig? Nope, just corn. All that pig was, in the greater schem of things, was the vehicle by which that corn was got to me. In a better world a pig would root in the ground eating whatever its strong snout grubbed up or its sharp tusks could tear into. Pork came from that but what do you call this stuff that came from an animal who's only purpose in life was to eat all the corn it possibly could in order to gain weight to be sold to me - just a little corn processing factory.

And eggs. We've raised chickens, I know what they eat. If you have a garden you simply can not have chickens running around. They will eat just about every vegetable you try to grow. And grasshoppers; there just won't be any more grasshoppers or many other bugs around if you have chickens out there eating whatever in all of creation chickens are supposed to eat. And when you have chickens like that and they lay eggs those eggs have taste and they have texture. But what do I get today? Eggs are corn, they are corn put through a chicken and in fact put through a chicken who quite possibly never ate any single thing in its life that was not corn or a product of corn. How do we call these things eggs?

And the chicken itself - do I need to repeat the above?

Beef - don't even get me started on beef.

And then there is the canned crap. Once again its our old friend High Fruitrose Corn Syrup - this shit is ubiquitous, its everywhere, its in just dam near everything we eat.

Folks, if you are what you eat we are all standing here just about one cob short of a stalk-full if we allow this to continue.

Rant over - have a nice day.

[MercutioATC]

1. Pepsi Throwback

On shelves now.

Sugar instead of HFCS.

[Fumesucker]

2. But what about the fish genes they put in the corn?

Doesn't that count for anything?

:evilgrin:

[ThomWV]

3. Farm raised catfish eat a diet of corn - and there goes one of my favorite foods

Catfish - think of it, catfish. How could anyone do this to my beloved catfish?

Catfish aren't supposed to eat corn - they are supposed to eat every thing that every finds its way to the bottom, they are the scavengers who are supposed to get it all. Not corn, never corn.

[Fumesucker]

17. I really like catfish too..

And yes, they are swimming garbage cans..

[damntexdem]

11. Only if the corn field learns to swim.

;-)

[Guilded Lilly]

4. As much as my memory DROOLS over

the thoughts of having a freshly picked ear of sweet corn stripped of its stalks, dipped in a coffee can of melted butter and inhaled by me making sounds that only should be made by consenting adults(!)...today I have tried to eliminate as much food that is corn-ish in my life.

But as you have said, it is next to impossible in a country with a proud and expansive Corn Belt and soil that just begs to be filled with those willowy stalks.

[TNDemo]

5. Have you seen King Corn?

Great documentary about this very thing. I am very conscious in trying to eat real food - the kind that actually decomposes.

[ixion]

8. heh... you beat me to it...

:hi:

[CrispyQ]

20. King Corn -- highly recommended!!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

There were so many parts of the movie I liked, but I think the part that had the most impact was when one of the young men pulled an ear of corn off the stalk & took a bite of it. He immediately spit it out. They interviewed a local farmer who made the comment that the hundreds of thousands of acres of corn that they grew was, basically, inedible. Most of the corn grown goes to feed animals or is converted into HFCS. It was a stunning documentary.

Our food industry is completely perverted. Along with just about every other industry, as well. x(

[ixion]

6. Yeah, watch the documentary King Corn, if you haven't already

when the guys who made the movie started out, they were mostly made of corn. Great documentary.

[Warpy]

7. Good rant

but the way to do backyard chickens and a garden is to move the chicken run every couple of years and plant the garden over the old chicken run. Old chicken doodle and litter makes for great sheet composting. The chickens are free to eat whatever they find in the run along with what you feed them, probably corn although millet will also do.

Diet soda isn't that bad, especially the stuff flavored with Splenda. I make my own soda with a CO2 setup and diet syrup, again sweetened with Splenda. It's a little less gassy than commercial soda and that's actually a good thing. Anything that lets me avoid HFCS is a good thing.
The few times I'm stuck someplace on a hot day and have to drink the sugary stuff it's like trying to drink maple syrup. Ugh.

You can also buy range fed beef in some big health food stores if you don't mind hocking everything you own to pay for it. The secret is to eat less meat, but you already knew that, right?

Canned food is Satanic, loaded with salt as well as HFCS, so I avoid just about all of it except canned mushrooms for emergencies and canned tomatoes for winter. Muir Glen is the best, IMO.

I tend to eat pretty low on the food chain, although today is a good day, thin salmon fillets arranged around a filling of rice and crabmeat. Yesterday was a refried bean burrito, so it all evens out.

[cdsilv]

10. We are the children of CORN.

I read somewhere that when the human body is cremated a spectrographic analysis of the flames shows a preponderance of the
carbon isotope that is primarily associated with corn.

So we really are the children of corn.

[Guilded Lilly]

21. It seems that eventually EVERYTHING we eat

will be declared bad for us!

With the problem of mass production of foods, there is no truly safe way to package/preserve it. And the better the food is for us, (i.e. the less harmful things put IN)the more it costs. A vicious cycle in trying to feed a family in healthy ways on a smaller budget.

[Warpy]

27. I spent over two years eating a dull diet

of brown rice, beans, and root veggies. It was boring and it wasn't particularly tasty but it kept me both alive and healthy.

What I would have killed for isn't processed food. It's fruit.

Fresh stuff isn't a budget killer if you're not particular and will eat winter squash, turnips, potatoes, onions, parsnips, and other stuff that is usually around for people making beef stew and is not terribly expensive.

Families will rebel, of course. My cat didn't seem to care what I ate as long as she got her kibble.

[KittyWampus]

9. A righteous rant. I give it a 9.5 with .5 points being deducted for not enough

real screaming and a total lack of profanity.

The Rude Pundit has me spoiled :+

[pipi_k]

12. I'm so lazy I skipped the middleman and had popcorn for lunch

:7

[pipi_k]

14. From a bag. Already popped.

:7 :7

[CrispyQ]

22. Tsk, tsk!

:spank:

[damntexdem]

13. OK, but where's the beef?

;-)

[truedelphi]

15. We don't eat much corn in our house.

Cannot tolerate MSG which is in all sodas. So those are not present on our shelves.

For snacks, we have raisins and organic dried apricots. Also apples and oranges. In late summer, pears.

We have curried lentil soup one night a week. Caesar salad two nights a week. (Both of us love anchovies, which as ocean swimmers, do not eat much corn.)

We have some thing hamburger one or two night a week. Some times we have fried rice with veggies.

And chicken one night and chicken soup. We make the soup with plenty of vegetables - including radishes, celery, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, chopped lettuce, and spinach, cooked cauliflower, green beans, and whatever else is around in the vegetable bin.

In the summer we grow our own cucumbers. Lots of sour cream/yogurt cuke dishes.

Oh and mushroom soup from the Imagine company. A little bit of cayenne on it, and I think it is quite gourmet. Often that is my late night snack. (Very few calories.)

I make rice and corn crackers. Sometimes with garlic, sometimes with cracked pepper.

[onestepforward]

16. Why all the corn? It's cheap because it is federally subsidized.

I don't like it either, especially that the majority of it is GMO too. There won't be any change until the subsidies change or we, the consumers, demand change.

[woo me with science]

18. Okay, where's that .gif of the cat eating corn

when you need it???

[hedgehog]

19. Within a mile from my house there are

1- KFC
1- Arby's
1- McDonald's
1- Burger King
1- Wendy's
1- Pizza Hut
1- Domino's
3- Dunkin' Donuts
1- Fajita Grill
1- Subway
2- Little Caesar's


I have discovered over the years that if I'm hungry, none of these places serves real food!



Chicken note: I sprinkle feed around any place I want weeded or cleared for planting. The chickens clear it to bare dirt in a day!

[MadHound]

23. So, what are you going to do about it?

A good first step would be to grow some of your own food. You would be surprised at what you can grow in your own back yard, including corn.

Another good step is to change what you're buying and where you're buying it. Go to a farmer's market, many times you can find lots of corn free food, including beef, pork and chicken. Or get to know some small, local farmers, you would be surprised at the deals you can get. I live in the country and get my beef, grass fed, no steroids organic beef from my neighbor. $2.30/pound after processing, any cut. Get to know some of your country living coworkers, odds are they've got chickens with eggs for sale. Look in the paper, join a CSA.

There are lots of options if you start looking around. Don't just throw your hands in the air and resign yourself to crap food. Start looking for it, start demanding it, and you will find it.

[Taitertots]

24. Eat Fish? n/t

[this_side_up]

25. Take a look at soy. We could sing a duet!

I see/read soy this and soy that in just about everything.

It's not normal just as all this corn whatever is not normal.

Then check out stearic acid, magnesium stearate and all
the other stearates (spelling?) They help bacteria mutate?
and avoid antibiotics? Whatever.

Corporations are killing us slowly. The only good thing is
it is also killing them and theirs albeit more slowly as they
have the big bucks to purchase the better grade of stuffs.

[dixiegrrrrl]

26. Amazing what happens to your diet when HFC is banned from the pantry.

After reading the studies of what HFC does to the liver and pancreas,
we stopped buying anything that has it.
Which means a lot of processed foods are banned.
But so are a lot of GMO foods.
Which forced us to re-think our menus.
But which also saves on our grocery bill.
Sodas leach calcium from the bones, btw. Another reason to avoid them.

Here at the edge of our small town, we can keep chickens.
Great weeders, we have a portable pen/fenced area for them to clear the weeds and ticks and bugs, then we plant the cleared areas. Stuff grows so fast here than hand weeding cannot keep up.
If you have a large enough patch of dirt, many towns allow chickens ( but not roosters, often)

Corn, to us, is Silver Queen, only available in the summer, great taste. We grow it and buy extra.
Eating in season has been interesting.
In season and local foods are much more appreciated.

Sooner rather than later the 3,000 mile salad will become an impossibility.