Sarah DeStefano, Greta Gaubaite, Jensine Ironuma, Thelora Marseille, Hong Tran Big Industry Food Production

- Able to feed everyone because of the mass production - Food tends to be a lot cheaper - Everything in a supermarket can be rooted back to corn - The reason why corn is used a lot is because when the pilgrims tried growing wheat in the "New World", it couldn't grow the way it was suppose to because of the climate. But they realized that corn grew a lot quicker, allowing them to use greater amounts of it for almost everything. - Corn conquers everything in the American culture.

1. Used to be used as currency 2. "This one plant supplied settlers with a ready-to-eat vegetable and a storable grain, a source of fiber and animal feed, a heating fuel and an intoxicant. Corn could be eaten fresh off the cob ("green") within months after planting, or dried on the stalk in fall, stored indefinitely, and ground into flour as needed" (25). Because there is an excessive supply of corn used in today's products, the cost of the item is inexpensive. 3. Corn easily adapts to different environments, allowing the supply to never decrease.

- The price of corn became extremely cheap that it caused small/local farmers to run out of business, thus creating the BIG INDUSTRY (larger farms equaled to a larger amount of productivity). - "Let's say the price of a bushel falls to $1.45, as it most recently did in October Since the official target price (called the "loan rate") in Greene County stands at $1.87, the government would then send farmers another $0.42 in "deficiency payments," for a total of $0.70 for every bushel of corn they can grow. Taken together these federal payments amounts for nearly half the income of the average Iowa corn farmer and represent roughly a quarter of the $19 billion U.S. taxpayers spend each year on payments to farmers" (61). This shows how local farmers are running out of business due to the fact that they are not gaining any profit from their production of corn.

HOW CORN EFFECTS THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING AT THE MARKET

Big industry food is not as unhealthy as it is made out to be. The companies are still under the governments rule and must meet FDA standards. Big Industries do care. Some companies have looked at the possibility of altering production to achieve better health benefits from the food being produced. Michael Pollan : On the other hand, they’re going to Michelle Obama and saying, “We want to be part of the solution. How can we help?” I think they’ve…very cleverly drawn her into a conversation about tweaking processed food in a way that “food companies market functional foods with health- promoting or wellness-maintaining properties”

Big Organic is not as organic as we think. Joel Salatin, farmer and author : "a broiler [meat chicken] can be fed certified organic feed in a confinement house, without fresh air and sunshine, without green salads, trucked for hours to a processing plant that electrocutes the bird and spills feces all over the carcass during evisceration, and be labeled 'certified organic.' In animal production, organic describes primarily diet, and everything else is either not mentioned at all or is ‍‍ Big Food can be just as healthy as “organic” food. We are currently able to feed the world thanks to Big Food. So why fix something that is not broken? The actual problem lies in distribution of the food.

 “The longer the ingredient label on a food, the more fractions of corn and soybeans you will find in it. They supply the essential building blocks, and from those two plants (plus a handful of synthetic additives) a food scientist can construct just about any processed food he or she can dream up”(91-2).  “exactly what corn is doing in such food systems has less to do with nutrition or taste than with economics”(93).  “Processed food has become largely a supply-driven business – the business of figuring out clever ways to package and market the glut of commodities coming off the farm and out of wet mills”(94).

 Annual growth of food industry – 1 %  Annual growth of population – 1 %  Food companies have to get creative  Get people to spend more  get them to eat more  Aim for both at the same time  Use corn to reach both goals

CompoundRating Sucrose100 Fructose140 HFCS Glucose70-80 Galactose35 Maltose30-50 Lactose20 Relative Sweetness Scale - Sucrose = 100 HFCS is significantly sweeter than sucrose, which means that industries can package less of it for the same price as they would for sucrose, and they can make more of it, on top of that.

The average American consumed approximately 37.8 lb (17.1 kg) of HFCS in 2008, versus 46.7 lb (21.2 kg) of sucrose.[36] In countries where HFCS is not used or rarely used, sucrose consumption per person may be higher than in the USA;