It’s the ethanol in gas, hand soap, adhesives, chewing gum, paints and fireworks, most medication, makeup and so on and so on.
In: Chemistry
The US government in the 70s began subsidizing corn farmers in order to reduce the overall cost of food and keep farmers employed, and it had the side effect of basically putting Mexican corn farmers out of business in turn making the US the worlds largest corn supplier.
Combined with decades of crop science led to increasing large yields and even cheaper corn.
Corn and corn by-products became so cheap and available that companies started to find uses for them in everything from foods to industrial products.
Which is why soda for example switched from using Beet Sugar and to Corn Syrup in the 80s.
Corn is now used in just about everything and is a a major source of cattle feed.
While there’s no known direct scientific connection between the switch to corn by-products and obesity, the obesity epidemic did start around this time leading a lot of people to conclude that this was one of the main causes.
If that does prove to be true, this would be yet another awful thing you can blame on Richard Nixon.
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