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Corn.
Corn is in the vast majority of things we eat today. I should say it is in the vast majority of processed (read: bad for you) foods today.
Given the huge surpluses of corn we have (thanks to farm subsidies) our scientists have developed some ingenious uses for things like high fructose corn syrup... and it isn't just replaceing cane sugar as a sweetener it is being used in addition to the sugars that were there to begin with adding an addition level of caloric intake. And that meat you are eating? Corn. Hogs and cows, "grain fed", live largely (and by largely I also mean fatly) on a diet, made up largely of corn (most cows, if we didn't slaughter them for market would die from system failure due to the diet we feed them).
Given the cheapness of corn (and corn by-products) Industrial Food has found more and ingenious ways to use it.
The thing is if you are shopping today you can buy about 1200 calories of energy for about $1. This would be in processed foods. If you were to try and get that same 1200 calories from produce it would cost roughly $5. It's no wonder the poorest people in North America are becoming increasingly fat (read: obese).
We have a system of government subsidies that are supporting the obeseity of our nations.
The upside is our food is much cheaper. The downside is we are slowly killing ourselves with processed foods. Ruining the diversity of our ecosystems with industrial farming.
So, corn and the sytem built around it is not so good...
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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke
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