A Mom's Research into the U.S. Food Industry

What an amazing woman and mom. Taking the fight for healthier food for her family public.

King Corn

A few weeks ago a friend on Facebook posted about a documentary about the role of corn in our lives and diet. It sounded interested and my husband and I finally watched it tonight. King Corn was very interesting and not entirely shocking. I learned more about the role the government plays in the corn industry and about how Iowa is a huge corn producer, but the corn grown there is cheap and low in nutrition. The corn there basically turns into feed for cattle and high fructose corn syrup. It's cheap, and in turn allows companies to turn out cheap products.

Corn in some form is in so many foods that we don't even realize. An entire fast food hamburger combo meal has some form of corn in it. High fructose corn syrup is in so many different foods and things that would never occur to you like breadcrumbs. I haven't been a fan of high fructose corn syrup for a while now and have been making an effort not to buy things that contain it. There is still a huge debate about whether it is harmful or not compared to regular sugar, but it is so highly processed that I'm trying to steer clear of it. Of course trying to limit any kind of sweetener is important. I love that Fresh and Easy makes their products without HFCS or any preservatives or artificial products.

The other interesting thing was about the corn fed beef that we eat constantly. Supposedly the corn fed beef has a higher saturated fat content than grass fed beef, not to mention that the corn is horrible for the cows. But it's cheap so who cares right? I'm by no means going the vegetarian route ever, but I think I'm going to read up and look into the cost of grass fed beef as a possibility. The other thing was all of the antibiotics that they have to give the corn fed cows to keep them from dying before slaughter because of the confinement and corn diet. Yikes.

All I can say is do we really know what is going into our bodies? How is it all effecting our health? All of these chemicals can't be good.

I'm just trying to change things little by little. I'm only doing what is manageable for us at the time. Of course anyone can eat however they'd like, but this is what works for us. Like I said, I am learning as I go.

New Focus

I haven't posted since August for a very good reason: I went back to teaching full time. It feels like I'm just trying to stay afloat a lot of the time. Life is busy. Somehow this weekend I have a little free time so it's time to catch up on some blogging. I'm changing my focus on this blog a bit I think. I always change my mind so we'll see how long it lasts. I suppose this is a less family related blog and more about other things I'm thinking about so it could be about a random mishmash of things I suppose.

Over the last few years, essentially since I was trying to get pregnant in 2008, I've been trying to go a more natural route when it comes to eating and health. I've never completely stopped doing that since then, just to varying degrees. I've been trying to make more of an effort lately to make our lives more natural so I'm going to probably be talking a lot about my learning and journey through this process.