Marie, Adriane. “Is Corn Good Or BAD?: 2021 Ingredient Guide for Health, Environment, Animals, Laborers.” HEALabel, HEALabel, 11 Aug. 2021, healabel.com/c-ingredients/corn.
“Is corn good or bad for you; your health, appearance, energy, longevity? Is corn sustainable; good or bad for the environment? Is corn associated with labor concerns?” Corn has been shown to have more benefits to one’s health, for example corn helps aid digestion as well as improving one’s eye health. Though the consumption of corn may lead to the lack of nutrient absorption in the body. Environment wise the production of corn has a fairly high water footprint, it consumes about 146 gallons of water per 2.2 pounds of corn, furthermore corn depletes nitrogen along with other crucial nutrients from soil which causes very poor soil quality. This means that “farmers must use chemical fertilizers to encourage plant growth.” These chemicals along with pesticides accumulate in ground weather which then becomes airborne.
This article from healabel contains lots of information one must need about corn. It is split into multiple sections, with each section having lots of specialized information about a specific corn topic. I like this article because not only does it give lots of information, it explains how it helps/ hurts people and the environment. Furthermore this text shows how corn is harmful for the environment because of its nutrient consumption, and how it forces farmers to use chemical fertilizer.
Horatiu- I think you’ll find corn to be way more complicated than most people imagine… and it’s in everything! Did the article mention which type of corn this study was on? My guess is industrial #2 corn that actually can’t be eaten directly. You may already know that the govt provides subsidies to farmers to grow more corn, even if it causes the price to drop below what it costs them to grow it. Do you think based on what you know so far that this could actually benefit society, or is it a mistake?
Great questions! The article does not state the certain types of corn, though it does state where the majority of corn is grown, and from that we can conclude which corn is being talked about depending on which region of the world its coming from. #2 Though it may be an unpopular opinion I think that lowering the price margin for corn is a benefit to society, because corn is such a wide spread and high maintenance crop that in the long run it hurts the environment in drastic ways, and since it is a popular crop worldwide changing our resources from con to a different more environmentally friendly crop would be a far smarter plan over continuing to grow corn with at a loss of profit.
I agree with the fact that this article provides great insight into the pros and cons of corn. That being said, what do you think is the biggest harmful impact, corn has on society?
Great question! I would say that the large amount of water use is a major problem (especially in a time of drought), but i think that no one problem should be looked over due to another one, and that we should use equal amounts of resources to solve all problems instead of prioritizing one over another.