We literally are what we eat; our metabolic function converts the stuff we consume into our material bodies: flesh, bone, hair, etc. In a memorable passage in Micheal Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, a biologist analyzes a strand of his own hair; he finds it shot through with corn's unique carbon signature.
Materially speaking, eaters of the standard American diet are corn. Or, as the biologist tells Pollan, "When you look at the isotope ratios, [U.S. residents] are corn chips with legs."
Perhaps inspired by Pollan, University of Hawaii researchers A. Hope Jahren and Rebecca Kraft have released a study [PDF] through the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the carbon and nitrogen isotopes of fast-food chicken, beef, and french fries.
Their conclusion will not startle Pollan readers: Like the biologist's hair sample, our major fast-food products are mainly just highly manipulated, transmogrified manifestations of corn. If the report offers little that's surprising, it still makes interesting reading.
The researchers sampled burgers, chicken sandwiches, and fries from McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King franchises across the country.
They have a gift for tidily summing up key facts about fast food. For example:
By purchasing and eating 1 serving of the substrates of this study (i.e., 1 hamburger, 1 chicken sandwich, and 1 small order of fries), the consumer has gained 50% of that day's recommended calories, 80% of carbohydrates, 75% of protein (90% if the consumer is a woman), and the full day's limit of dietary fat at a cost of $3.
Wow -- that's a lot of bang for three bucks. No wonder fast-food sales are booming in this grim economy.
I suppose this is the money quote:
100% of the chicken and 93% of the beef sampled in this study had [a carbon signature] consistent with an exclusively corn-based diet.
Samples also showed heightened levels of nitrogen -- reflecting the huge amounts of synthetic fertilizer that gets dumped on corn fields every year.
The study also has information about the distributors that supply the Big Three fast-food chains with meat. Turns out just three suppliers have sewn up this vast market -- another sign of the intense consolidation of our food system.
A company called Martin-Brower supplies McDonald's with beef, while BK and Wendy's get theirs from Maines Paper and Food Service.
All three get their chicken from the same place: meat giant Tyson Foods. Thus the author's detect "extreme homogeneity" in the carbon and nitrogen isotopes of the fast-food giant's chicken products. In other words, all three are serving up the exact same same slop.
As for fries, the authors found that Wendy's uses corn oil, while McDonald's and Burger King use "other oils." The most significant thing I found in that section was this startling sentence:
French fries are manufactured by immersing preformed emulsified potato (Solanum tuberosum) meal in 190 °C fat for 3 min.
Wait a minute. "Preformed emulsified potato meal"? The fast-food chains aren't using cut potatoes for their fries, but rather some sort of molded instant potato mix? I honestly didn't know that. How lame.
Makes sense, though. To make real fries, you've got to cook them twice -- and probably for longer than three minutes.
The authors didn't get around to running their tests on soft drinks. They note, however, that the soft drinks served up by the chains are "dominantly sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup."
Vandana Shiva sometimes speaks of "monocultures of the mind" -- the inability to think beyond the limits of industrial agriculture. The fast food chains are serving up monocultures of the waistline -- not-so-clever, vastly wasteful, and monumentally unhealthy tweaks on one big crop: corn.
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Comments
View as Flat
Chris McMasters Posted 6:20 am
15 Nov 2008
Michael Pollan: props to you.
Chris McMasters
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:35 am
15 Nov 2008
LMAO!!!
Har Har Har!!!
Obama is the Son of Corn! His state and his backers the people that Pollan is talking about.
Now you expect him to "do something"!
Give me a break...try reading something before pulling the level in the voting booth....
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Sam Wells Posted 9:55 am
15 Nov 2008
I have no clue about "corn carbon signature" but is sounds funky - chicken is chicken no matter if it eats bugs or corn, and beef is beef no matter is the cow eats corn or not. The part about processed and manufactured foods made from corn does make sense though.
Let's just say it is best to eat the real thing like the Kenyans do.
Onward through the fog
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Chris McMasters Posted 1:26 pm
15 Nov 2008
Give me a break...try reading something before pulling the level in the voting booth....
Did you mean 'lever?'
Anyway, I said I hope the next administration stops subsidizing fossil fuel based farming. Do I expect them to? That's probably too much to hope for. I think they'll do more with regards to energy for electricity and perhaps fuel efficiency than with farming. We'll see.
Chris McMasters
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Chris McMasters Posted 4:53 am
16 Nov 2008
If you read Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma,' you learn that the chicken and beef we eat are affecting us differently because of what they have been fed. Our environment and our health is also affected (usually negatively) because of how they have been raised and treated. That is to say, chicken isn't always chicken nor is beef always beef.
Eating a cow raised on grass from a fossil fuel free pasture is much better than eating a cow from a confined area feeding operation where cows are pumped full of antibiotics and spend much of their time in their own feces. When you add to the equation that these animals are basically force fed corn, the story gets worse. For our health and the environment, it makes no sense to raise cows in factory farms unless, of course, you prioritize profit over health.
The corn that the Kenyans eat is likely not the same corn that we feed the cows we eat. We'd probably be a lot better off if we ate the corn the Kenyans do, not the corn our cows eat.
Check out http://www.polyfacefarms.com/ for an example of more sensible way to raise cows.
If you are interested in learning about the ridiculous way we process corn to create 'edible food like substances' check out Pollan's 'In Defense of Food.' http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php
Chris McMasters
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:22 am
16 Nov 2008
Sound of crickets chirping...
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Chris McMasters Posted 8:45 am
16 Nov 2008
Chris McMasters
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Nickz Posted 6:42 am
17 Nov 2008
Both are Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs), but they affect the body very differently: a diet skewed to Omega-6 promotes inflammation, heart disease and cancer.
That's why fish and flax seeds are good for you, and why a corn-dominated diet is bad.
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waku2waku Posted 4:15 am
18 Nov 2008
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waku2waku Posted 4:43 am
18 Nov 2008
Seeing many of the posts from my researching in favor of HCFS and from the corn refiner's association, one has to ask him/herself if HCFS is as good as sugar, why don't other countries embrace it like it is in the U.S.? The strange thing is that it seems like most cola companies instead use cane sugar outside of the U.S. In fact, I've come across some other sites with posts from when people discover Pepsi or Coke with cane sugar from Mexico being sold in U.S. stores because people seem to like that taste better.
It seems this really has to do with the corn subsidies and tariffs on sugar imports, which created the market conditions for high fructose corn syrup in the first place. I easily imagine that if these conditions were changed than we'd quickly see corn syrup disappear from processed food.
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paz Posted 2:31 pm
19 Nov 2008
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iturnedgreen Posted 4:42 am
21 Nov 2008
Samples also showed heightened levels of nitrogen -- reflecting the huge amounts of synthetic fertilizer that gets dumped on corn fields every year.
The nitrogen used in this synthetic fertilizer was extracted from natural gas. So we're literally eating fossil fuels along with our corn. If you haven't read 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' yet, you really must for this and many other compelling facts and ideas.
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