Everything is corn. French fries, potato chips, soda, ketchup, mustard, yogurt, soup, cookies. mayonnaise, milk, beer, wine, bubble gum, ice cream, pickles, baby food. Even water bottles are made using corn. Virtually everything we put in our mouths is made with corn in some way, shape, or form. Even the meat you eat is made from animals that are fed corn. With a whopping 95% of the grain that is fed to livestock in America being corn.

Corn is also in crayons, candles, cleaners, fireworks, paint, plastic, glue, insulation, antibiotics, aspirin, makeup, explosives, batteries, and most importantly ethanol. Which is found in almost all the gasoline in America. Even our cars run on corn. So just imagine what would happen if we couldn’t grow it anymore. This one simple kernel is the difference between the modern world and us being blown back to the Stone Age. You can’t escape corn.

The rise of corn

Our modern society is completely dependent on corn. And all of this corn is secretly making us sick and fat. Its destroying the environment while systematically robbing us of our money. Big Corn doesn’t want you to know any of this. Why? Because of money. They don’t want you to know that the corn industry is worth 86 billion dollars or 10 billion dollars more than the tobacco industry. They don’t want you to know that high fructose corn syrup is secretly making you fat. Even though there’s literally no reason to be using high fructose corn syrup over natural sugar and they don’t want you to know that corn is the most subsidized crop in America. This is a nice way of saying money is coming out of your pocket in the form of taxes and straight into the pockets of Big Corn.

Around 4000 years ago corn looked nothing like it does today. It looked more like a grass than a vegetable. Instead of the big lump with knobs that we all know and love today. The stocks just had stems with super small cobs on them and kernels protected by a hard outer shell. This made ancient corn inedible. It was impossible to eat. So ancient Americans decided that they needed to do something about corn. They started selectively breeding corn to weed out all those negative traits while enhancing all the good stuff about it. And over time the kernels will grow to be way bigger and way more tightly packed together. The hard shell disappeared to reveal juicy plump knobs that were way better suited for eating.

So corn transformed from little stems to the huge edible corn we know today. Modern-day corn is a human invention and all of these modifications basically removed the plant’s natural seed dispersal system. This meant that if you didn’t purposely farm corn modern-day corn would disappear. Which would prove to be a problem today. Corn was America’s first genetically modified crop and over the next few thousand years corn will work its way up to become a staple of the American diet.

The birth of Big Corn

In the mid-1900s, the US government noticed that crop production was stagnating and it was making them really nervous. With the country’s population rising they needed to produce more food than ever before. Because nothing threatens your world more than a hungry population. But American farmers just couldn’t ram up production. So the government turned its attention towards corn.

Even though corn wasn’t a very nutrient-dense or reliable crop. Corn had one super important trait. You could easily modify it. The US government started pouring a ton of money and attention into this one crop. They built irrigation systems, and they developed new industrial fertilizers to keep up with how much nitrogen corn needed. They started using tractors and other mechanical tools to help corn flourish even more. And like magic corn production went through the roof.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, the US is the largest consumer, producer, and exporter of corn in the world. Suddenly the US had more corn than it knew what to do with. And running out of food was no longer a worry. Now the US was faced with the opposite problem. How do we make use of all this corn? The government knew that people just couldn’t keep eating more corn. So they had to come up with new ways to integrate corn into society. They needed to diversify their corn portfolio.

Corn is milled by either a wet or dry process. So it’s transformed into syrups and starches that also end up as ingredients in other processed foods people eat every day. And because the corn was subsidized by the government it incentivized companies to come up with creative ways to turn this super cheap crop into expensive high-margin products. And so corn oil was invented, corn starch, cornmeal, corn flour, corn cereal, and other stuff like ethanol and plastics. All these things came into being because of the government subsidies.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

The most important product to come out of corn subsidies was high fructose corn syrup. It is one of the main reasons why corn is everywhere these days. It’s pretty much impossible to find any processed food that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup in it. High fructose corn syrup has crept into our food supply over the last few decades. Now compared to regular sugars it’s cheaper and sweeter and it’s absorbed much more quickly by the body.

Fructose was initially thought to be a better choice for diabetics due to its low glycemic index. However high fructose corn syrup and high fructose in the diet lead to insulin resistance, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. If corn syrup is so bad why did food companies move away from cheap natural cane sugar to this expensive, complex, artificial sweetener made from corn?

It’s because the business of sugar is very lucrative. And back in the 70s Big Cron wanted in. During the 70s corn had already infiltrated thousands of American products but there was one last industry it hadn’t conquered. Sugars and sweeteners. There was just one problem. Sugar was cheap and plentiful. It was imported from cheap foreign countries. So why would food manufacturers ever buy expensive corn syrup that was complicated to produce when they had an endless supply of cheap foreign sugar?

The CEO of agricultural giant Archer, Dwayne Andreas had an idea. Andreas had a close relationship with President Ronald Reagan and began lobbying to create a quota on cane sugar imports. Claiming that the measure was necessary to protect domestic sugar companies. It was the perfect cover story. As soon as Reagan signed that law in place the price of sugar skyrocketed. And so every food manufacturer from Coca-Cola to Cadbury to Nestle all started looking for a cheaper alternative. Now that high fructose corn syrup was cheaper than sugar it started being used in everything. And America’s diet would never be the same.

The impact of corn

Today corn has infiltrated every single aspect of our modern society. And because America and the rest of the world are relying on corn the government can’t let Big Corn go under. One little blip in the corn supply chain and we are all going down. The corn industry gets more subsidies from the US government than any other crop. From 1995 to 2010 alone the corn industry was awarded around 90 billion dollars in subsidies. Nearly half of all the corn produced in the country goes right into ethanol. While the other half goes towards feeding livestock. Barely any corn actually goes to feeding people. And the portion that does goes into the most unhealthy junk food possible.

Growing corn takes a ridiculous amount of water. Corn fertilizer constantly washes off and pollutes America’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines. Corn fields attack the natural biodiversity of the country and growing corn is a major contributor to air pollution.