Chapter 5 Omnivores Dilemma

In chapter 5 of The Omnivores Dilemma, Pollan investigates on how corn is processed. He said that even though we don't eat a lot of corn, we still ocnsume a lot of it in ways we don't expect: the meat that was once cattle was fed corn gets into our body, alcohol is made from corn, fossil fuel, things fried in corn oil, and much more. In addition, corn enzymes are broken down into carbs that starts a long chain of different organic compounds. Corn is also found in processed food in this way: glucose, fructose, maltodextrin, methanol to name a few. Plowing the corn takes a lot of energy in the tractor-about 10 calories of fossil fuel is burned by gathering a ton of corn which is a big amount. The processed food companies also trick us. For example, if the cost of soy or corn spikes, the company will switch to fat and call it natural substances so that is why many items say: "contains one or more of the following ingriedients: corn, soybean, or sunflower oil."Also, the more ingriedients a product has, the less healthy it is because it means that many unnatural and unhealthy items are used to re-create the final processed food. They mix ingriedients together to get the product to look appealing and to fool the consumers. That is why processed food companies are a bit hesistant to give out ingriedients in the product because then the people would know exactly what is in the food and stop buying it and also to prevent other companies from stealing their ideas.