We just finished watching “King Corn” which is a documentary movie we saw “On Demand” with our Netflix.com subscription. Part of the movie covers how cheap corn is used as feed for cattle, which really isn’t the best for their health. They are fed on feed lots where they can’t get much exercise due to crowding, and fattened up as soon as possible, in months in stead of years. One guy in the movie said the cows are basically obese, plus it showed just a bit of how it gives them excess stomach acid and other health issues so they have to be given antibiotics all the time.
Well I think this movie has finally pushed us into changing our food buying and eating habits, at least with beef. I will document in this blog how it goes for us so you can see if our resolve lasts. Just check the lower right side of the page where you see categories listed and go to the Food category in the future to see other posts on this. Up until now we have tried to economize and have bought our ground beef and frozen chicken at Trader Joes, and cold cuts and frozen tilapia at Aldi. I had already decided to stop buying cold cuts period because for some reason they make me break out. Because of this movie we will try to only buy beef from Whole Foods and we’ll make sure it’s grass fed not corn/grain fed. As far as our chicken, we are still debating what to do. I think we are nervous about the cost, but we’ll have to investigate the cost difference between frozen chicken at Trader Joes and chicken pieces at the Whole Foods meat counter. Most likely Trader Joe’s frozen chicken comes from a factory farm where antibiotics are given liberally. Now do we change all that now, or just our beef buying habits? How about you guys, dear readers? So we’re definitely changing our beef buying, but for chicken we will research further. Stay tuned!
The movie also discusses how much calories people consume with sodas which have tons of high fructose corn syrup. We already don’t drink soda, so we’re OK there. Years ago I heard how soda syrup can be used to clean corrosion off of truck engines, and that was pretty much it for me and soda.