Chimel - 11/14/2012 06:08

Well these people are partly right, farmers don't grow human food as much as they grow animal feed.
Almost none of the corn is used directly for human consumption, except for that pop-corn, sweet corn and corn for tortilla meal that needs to be soaked in lye in order to be able to be digested. HFCS is produced from starch using a disgusting industrial process and is used on junk food to make things even worse, it's no wonder corn has such a bad image. Refined fructose sugar from beets or sugar cane is only slightly better, because it does not need the extra conversion from starch, but is just as bad from a dietetic perspective.

Same negativity for corn ethanol, it is one of the least efficient ways to produce fuel, compared to cane sugar, palm, or algae. We only use corn because we have (had) a cheap surplus of it. Now there is no corn ethanol subsidy anymore, but oil companies are still mandated to buy huge quantities of it. And without subsidy, the consumer will be paying the bill. Well, for that matter, he paid the subsidy from his taxes until last year, so it probably doesn't make much difference. In September, with the low yield projections, it was estimated that corn ethanol would absorb 40% of the total corn production if the mandate was not reduced. Yield has later be reestimated, but it looks like corn ethanol would probably represent a good 25% of this year's corn production. The mandate still hasn't been reduced as far as I know, but I am not particularly tracking the news in this sector, so I may be wrong.

Soybeans have about 20% oil and 40% proteins, so the oil goes almost entirely to human consumption, but the soy meal is also mostly for animal feed. It is true that the oil is not the best around, compared to cold pressed oils like olive oil, no question about it. Even great oils like sunflower's are actually bad for the health when extracted via solvents (basically some petrol product) and high temperatures. Organic oils use cold press expellers, that's why they are more popular with people concerned with health.

It is not a fad or a trend and there is no reason to be "tired or over sensitive" about these arguments, because they are well known consensual facts. Wheat gluten, other auto-immune type allergies and GMOs are a different matter, but for the latter, 40 years after the first GMOs, we still don't have a single credible long term toxicology study about them, so there is a strong reason to be at least suspicious about their effects on health. People who don't want to play Guinea pigs for Monsanto will also rightly try to avoid GMOs by choosing an organic label. Personally, I care more about the cross-pollination with non-GMO varieties than about possible health effects, but that's probably because I cook and use very little corn and soy products, but wouldn't it be nice to know for sure about these potential or non detectable health effects before the products are put on the market?