When a Crop Becomes King" By Michael Pollan

1. Pathos

2. Logos

3. 80 million acres of corn in the US

4. "Nearly 10 percent of the calories Americans consume now come from corn sweeteners; the figure is 20 percent for many children."

5. Runoff from these chemicals finds it way into the groundwater and, in the Midwestern corn belt, into the Mississippi River, which carries it to the Gulf of Mexico, where it has already killed off marine life in a 12,000 square mile area.

6. America’s corn crop might look like a sustainable, solar-powered system for producing food, but it is actually a huge, inefficient, polluting machine that guzzles fossil fuel—a half a gallon of it for every bushel.

7. "To keep it well fed and safe from predators we douse it with chemicals that poison our water and deepen our dependence on foreign oil."

8. Corn, by making itself tasty and nutritious, got itself noticed by Christopher Columbus, who helped expand its range from the New World to Europe and beyond.

9. The ears of sweet corn are just starting to show up on local farm stands, inaugurating one of the ceremonies of an American summer.

10. Ethos

11. This would be bad enough for the American waistline, but there’s also preliminary research suggesting that high-fructose corn syrup is metabolized differently than other sugars, making it potentially more harmful.

12. A recent study at the University of Minnesota found that a diet high in fructose (as compared to glucose) elevates triglyceride levels in men shortly after eating, a phenomenon that has been linked to an increased risk of obesity and heart disease.

13. Thesis

14. These days the nation’s nearly 80 million-acre field of corn rolls across the countryside like a second great lawn, but this wholesome, all-American image obscures a decidedly more dubious reality.