In “The Consumer,” Pollan explains the contribution that corn and its derivative products have had on America’s health. Although America is currently facing what the surgeon general calls an “obesity epidemic,” Pollan explains that the current state of emergency has a public health predecessor in alcohol. He explains that in the 1820s, most Americans drank corn whiskey throughout the day, causing America to become known as a “republic of alcohol.” At the time, there was an abundance of cheap corn, so it was only natural that people began to turn it into liquor.

Pollan suggests that Americans now live in a “republic of fat.” He refers to a United Nations report from 2000 that claims that the number of people suffering from over-nutrition (one billion) had surpassed the number of people suffering from malnutrition (800 million). Pollan points out that type II diabetes has become more prevalent than ever before, so much so that the life expectancy of children born in America is shorter than that of their parents. Pollan acknowledges that this obesity epidemic has a variety of causes (including changes in lifestyle, work, and marketing) but he invites his audience to consider the impact of excessive and cheap corn, and particularly the rise of high-fructose corn syrup, on America’s waistline.

In “The Farm,” Pollan explained how government policies from the 1970s created an excess supply of corn, which has since kept the price consistently low. Pollan argues that “when food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat.” He goes on to point out that since the 1970s, people have increased their calorie intake and that those extra calories are stored in the body’s fat cells. It is no coincidence that government policies created incentives for the cheap-food farm also during the 1970s. In the 1820s, excess corn was turned into alcohol or fed to pork; today, it is most often fed to cattle or turned into high-fructose corn syrup. Meanwhile, food companies have discovered that although people will consume a standard number of servings, they can be made to eat more food if the size of the serving is larger. In this way, America has overcome the fixed stomach that limits consumption.

Pollan points out that people have naturally evolved to eat sweet and fatty foods because they contain the most energy. However, in contemporary America, the food that contains high-fructose corn syrup is the cheapest way to obtain calories. Pollan notes it is more expensive to get a day’s worth of calories from carrots and whole foods than it is from soft drinks or chips. However, those foods are cheap because they are made from America’s mountain of cheap corn. Pollan concludes:

While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.

It seems that one of the most important dilemmas that the American omnivore faces is escaping from the republic of fat.