Who is Responsible for Your Health (5)

Consider corn. It is by a wide margin the United States' largest crop, consuming a quarter of all our farmland. And in one form or another -- corn syrup, cornstarch, corn oil, corn meal, corn gluten, animal feed, etc. -- it is part of a majority of the foods, from cereals to sodas to dairy to meat, that you'll find on a typical supermarket's shelves. Is this because corn is so good for us, or even because we all just adore the taste and demand a bit o' corn in and on absolutely everything that enters our mouths?

No.

The corn industry, like the agribusiness industry as a whole, is centered on revenue and profit, not your health. And the ten billion bushels of corn produced per year that bring in $20 billion are very cost-efficient and profit-producing, thank you.

The bottom line is that the corn kings -- the executives and their politicians at the head of operations -- do not plan their efforts around your health or the nation's. They produce mass quantities of corn because it is highly efficient and they push it up to the food manufacturers. The food manufacturers purchase these mass quantities of corn and utilize it in nearly every food because it is very cheap compared to other raw resources, and they in turn push these foods to the supermarkets and, through suppliers, to restaurants. The supermarkets and restaurants, through the aid of a little thing called marketing, then push it out to you, the consumer. And so you, lucky consumer, have thousands of corn-laced products to "choose" from. And most of us, standing before that magnificently colorful wall of sixty-nine different breakfast cereals, are duped into believing we're actually making a choice.

Most consumers are, to be blunt, very good cattle, consuming whatever is dumped before them, both literally and figuratively. But this blind trust, which embeds itself so deeply that it becomes convention -- part of our habits, our assumptions, our perception of what is "normal" -- can be deadly. Because, while it would be ideal if those others who are among the most responsible for our health and well-being therefore had our health and well-being as their central goal, they almost never do.

Whether it's agribusiness, food manufacturers, chain restaurants, drug makers, the health insurance industry, or any of the others most responsible for your health, they do not plan their business around increasing your health, happiness and longevity....... They plan their business around making money, and then more money, because that's why businesses are in business. This even (and especially) goes for the federal government that, despite being founded on a principle of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for its people, does not begin and end all discussions with what's best for the health of its citizens, as perhaps it should.

Sometimes the end result, the products or services provided by these others, are indeed good for you in addition to being good for them. But often -- judging from our overweight and chronic disease epidemics and other factors, far too often -- their goals are antithetical to our own, or what should be our own.

It's not that these institutions are all evil. Some may border on that label, as Dr. Mercola has effectively pointed out in his newsletters, may be the case with the pharmaceutical industry whose goals have mutated into downright greed, but most are neither good nor bad. They are simply … in business. We live in a free market society, and they have a right to exist within that framework. But because we live in a free market society, and a democracy to boot, you have every right to question them. - to find out all you can about how they are contributing to your health, or lack of it, and to choose other options if you don't like what you find. You have every right not to trust them, and because you are placing part of your life in their hands but they are motivated by goals other than your life, you shouldn't trust them.

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