Dear Iowa, I'm not playing your game anymore

The whole corn thing. I knew it was wrong months ago when I learned that corn isn't a real natural food. Nature never made big corn ears with several plump juicy kernels. Nature made spindly little corns that were bred for hundreds of years by the South Americans, and then spread up to North American Indians and deliberately turned into multicolored Indian corn which, while it wasn't a natural food, was still higher in protein and nutrients than the corn that exists today while still being plumper.

Sorry- Iowa, I'm publicly announcing this, so for just a minute there, I wasn't talking to you. I'm sure you know ALL about corn's sordid past. I'm just letting people know that I do have a little history of being repulsed by corn. It's like a vegetable, but it's not even real. That doesn't jive with me. I knew there was a reason it didn't get digested properly and it's not just so we can be entertained when our 2 yr olds say "mommy yook- day's kawn in dah pawddy; kawn iz in my poos. mommy yookahdid"

Today, however, I saw the indy documentary film King Corn. It was a very high quality film, entertaining, informative and insightful. I will never eat corn again. I will, however, pretend for this evening that there's no corn syrup in the raspberry salad dressing or the black licorice I'm munching on. I'm not buying any more corn food, though. Including beef. I know Safeway sells grass fed beef, it's like $825 a pound or something.

The entire thing is disgusting, though. I'm not getting into it. You can either go research the film yourself, and get all disgusted or you can ignore it and pretend you never read this. I will never consume another corn product as long as I live. I heard the UN is against using food for fuel, but all the corn that grows in Iowa isn't edible. Every part of the plant is used in industry or to feed cattle. I wonder if corn fed cattle farts more than grass fed cattle?

In nature cows eat grass, right. And they grow for a few years and when they're a few years old they're big and healthy and can be eaten. However, in the US, cows are fed a mixture of corn, corn skins (leftover from ethanol processing) and ground chopped corn stalks. They're confined into little pens so they don't get any exercise so that they can be fatter. In about 100 days the cows are... turned into food. Instead of waiting years, they can wait just a few months because they get so fat on the corn diet.

Because corn isn't their natural food (or anyone's natural food) the cows start getting sick right away. The acidity causes ulcers and if they don't turn them into food they die really soon anyways because they're so unhealthy. Since they get these ulcers and they live in such close quarters, antibiotics are added to all of their food.

This is our meat we're talking about. Are you sick now? You probably are- seriously, people are pretty sick these days. I'll bet the drug companies fund this. Ooh- actually, it's our government that funds this. That's a big part of it.

And it does get worse.

This is why I didn't want to see an inconvenient truth. I'm not going to be able to eat beef for like at least a month now, knowing me. Remember the water thing?

It's all fine and dandy with me, I've been trying to ditch these stupid last few baby pounds by working on this whole-ish foods thing for the past few days. I've eaten salads (dark leafy greens, no iceberg lettuce- ask me why, I dare you) and pecans, orange juice, coffee, kickers energy spray, snow pea pods, pickled vegetables, provolone cheese, and juice every day (carrot, spinach, celery and garlic)

I got these stupid Ginsana supplements. Don't waste your money. OK they're for "energy and memory" but you're supposed to take them twice a day for a full month before you see results- WTF? Who the hell would remember to take their memory aid twice a day before it worked. How is that even possible. I stumbled upon the receipt the other day, I've had this fr!&&!#@ box for like 3 months now and I have remembered to take all of seven of them.

Sorry, Iowa. That probably had nothing to do with you. Or did it? Maybe when the corn is out of my system I'll have a memory again. I hope I remember not to eat it.