The Challenge

Greetings! We are a family of 4 (if you include our dog, and we do) and we want to challenge ourselves to remove processed corn from our diet. Considering that 95% of products at the supermarket contain some form of corn product or by-product this may seem like an impossible feat. And it may be, that's what we are going to find out. Why take away the sweet nectar of delicious high fructose corn syrup and the like? Well, there are a few reasons. None of which we can take credit for. We watched Food, Inc. and King Corn and became pretty disgusted by the food industry in America. Many of the nation's health problems stem from poor diet (um, obviously). The obesity epidemic really started in the 70s when the corn market changed and the surplus of corn left companies scrambling to find ways to trick us to eat more and more corn. Clever scientists broke corn down and recreated it into thousands of different products which now are used as filler in just about everything you eat. The most disturbing result of the corn surplus created by government subsidies is the use of corn to feed lifestock. Cows eat grass. In that, cows are designed to eat grass. They graze and then poop which fertilizes the soil which they then spread around with their hooves which leads to grass. That's the natural way. However, that happens so rarely in America now. Cows are held in huge pens where they are fed corn and grains (and yes, cows still eat cows as protein filler). Corn? Corn. Cows eat corn for one reason and one reason only: its cheap. They do not walk around. They do not graze. They stand in their own poop. They are pumped full of drugs to keep them alive long enough to get them fat. It is, in kind terms, unnatural. So we figured that if we stop eating corn-fed beef, corn-byproducts, corn chemicals, etc that we would feel better about ourselves and our health and stop contributing to the factory farming lifestyle that is dominating our country. So that's our challenge (actually it was a challenge laid out by the documentarians of King Corn and we are happy to give it a try). Follow us or join us if you'd like. We are going to identify corn products, try corn-free recipes, and write about our adventures living corn-free.