Bumper corn crop equals more overweight

The blog I wrote on peak food looked at a number of issues, and suggested that maybe we had reached peak food some time ago.  This was based on a billion people hungry, and more on the way.  

Have you watched the movie Food Inc?  One of the issues about which I learnt in the movie is the overwhelming number of cattle feed lots that produce the meat for America.  A vast majority of them use corn as the main feed.  The biological structure of cows is not intended to be fed grains, and especially corn, which is high in sugars.  E-Coli has been linked to these feed lot animals as a direct consequence.

Cattle are intended to forage in grassland, or grazing lands.  That is how their bodies have evolved.  

There are other problems such as corn fed to the cattle may have chemical residue from production.  Or who can forget the widespread BSE [mad cows disease] from other non forage feed.  Ruminants (that is, cows or cattle) are less likely to experience digestive problems (e.g. acidosis and enterotoxemia) if they are consuming high forage diets rather than grains.

Rumen acidosis is also called grain poisoning, and can cause death or at least as a subclinical condition causing lost productivity [growth of meat for sale to you the consumer] and unhealthy cattle.  Enterotoxemia in cattle is also known as pulpy kidney, and occurs with excessive grain and insufficient forage.  The flow of food through the intestine [eq.] slows down or the bacteria living in the intestine multiplies and produces more toxins than the animals antibodies can cope with.  The outcome of this awful problem is often death with 24 hours.

Of course, for both these problems, there is a preventative measure:  vaccinations.  As it says in Food Inc, I recall [from many years ago]:  first we create the problems by feeding ruminant animals the wrong food, then rather than going back to the correct food for their biological structure, we invest in ever more ways to prevent the problems created by us in the first place.  This then, again, leads to more problems. 

As this United States Department of Agriculture reports, the cow cannot directly utilise most feed components, even simple sugars.  It relies on rumen microbes to convert feed.  And each cow has its own population of rumen bacteria. Good old trusty Wikipedia gives a good and detailed description of the process here.

Some feed lots “finish” the cattle on corn.  Actually it is not uncommon for many animals to be fed grains for fattening purposes.  Or during severe droughts, when there is no other fodder available. However, one of the consequences is that there is marbling of the fat throughout the beast.  This, it  is suggested, makes for a better tasting steak, for example, as the fat softens and moistens the meat during cooking.

It also adds unnecessary fat to the diet, a diet that the First Lady is trying to change. As the Food Inc story unfolds it makes clear that one in two Hispanics will have diabetes within a few decades, and one in three caucasian Amercians, from poor diets.  Lean meat, without the fat marbling,  is far superior in terms of protein benefits and health.

But it is difficult to argue against the meat industry, as Oprah Winfrey will tell you.  Is America the only country in the world where a company / association can sue for defamation?  

Just as we keep drilling and mining unsustainable sources of fossil fuel, so we are seeking and producing unsustainable sources of protein.  Unsustainable at both ends of the value chain, at production and at the consumption end.

Bloomberg is not the only news outlet that I read, but it is often interesting.  This article on a record corn crop to feed cows, reminded me of the problems we have and the links between food, water, oil, and carbon.  That record corn crop would be better placed being used for ethanol to replace oil.  Let the cows roam free and improve everybody’s health.