Omnivore - Chapters 5 and 6

Chapter 5 begins Pollan's discussion on processed foods. In wet mills (ADM, Cargill), number 2 corn is separated into the germ (embyro), endosperm and skin. These are then processed and fractionated to make various corn derivatives like fructose, dextrose, xanthum gum, alcohol and very adhesive compounds. Why does food need to broken down only to be repackaged from these derivatives?

Pollan brings up the idea of the need for growth in the food industry. The food industry operates with inelastic demand (the "fixed stomach) and thus can only grow through population growth (about 1%, people can't just keep eating). But that's not enough growth for investors, demand needs to be manufactured. Because heavy production of any food necessarily drops the price and it becomes a commodity, food corporates (General Mills, Coca-Cola) need to use these dirt cheap commodities to create a value-added product that can be sold for more money. With the great pile of corn, the dirt cheap (unprofitable) commodity is broken down and repackaged into a more marketable, profitable form... the end result being an overfed populace.

Chapter 6 continues this sentiment, introducing pre-Prohibition America. Again commodity corn was overflowing and was distilled into corn whiskey to create a product. The result was a nation that drank half a pint of spirits a day per capita. The so-called alcoholic republic has direct parallels to today's republic of fat. Today's corn surplus allows for cheap high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) instead of cheap alcohol. Because it was so cheap, it was added into everything and even worse, allowed corporation to introduce the supersized portion (selling more quantity for the same price is better than selling smaller portions at a lower price). The dramatically low price of HFCS coupled with its high energy density (tapping into human's hunter-gatherer reward circuit) has eventually led to Americans practically living off of it. As Pollan says, "Very simply, we subsidize HFCS but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest."