Every morning before school I hosted a thirty minute prep period for students who needed help doing homework or studying for a test. Not only did this provide an opportunity for me to get to know my students outside of a more structured class setting, but it also gave me the chance to see what they ate for breakfast. One of my favorite students, Timothy, came in every morning eating what he called a “breakfast burger.” Now I know I just enumerated on the delights of the tasty Lolita burger, but I’d never suggest giving that to a child for his first meal of the day. Timothy would saunter into the room, slump down in his chair, and unwrap this:

Yes, those are home fries at the bottom of the bun. Our school is a mere 100 feet from a Burger King and only three blocks from a McDonald’s, institutions that many of my students patronize on their daily walks to school. Timothy would down his double burger between 8:05 and 8:20 every morning, and no one batted an eye. His egregious choice made me further inspect other students’ breakfasts, many of which consisted primarily of chips, candy, and soda. One of my favorites was the “champagne” beverage found below:

I never ventured to snag a sip from one of the many middle school students who quenched his thirst with this particular cocktail, but I could only imagine what Korbel and Pepsi might taste like when mixed. The closest thing to juice I ever saw was Sunny D, which packs enough sugar to send a small rat into a diabetic coma. I knew there was a crisis at hand, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of it until I recently watched a documentary entitled “King Corn,” an account of just how pervasive and dangerous products like sodas and fast-food burgers are when they contain high fructose corn syrup and other corn byproducts.

“King Corn” follows two recent college graduates for 9 months as they plant and harvest one acre of corn in the rural town of Greene, Iowa. Friendly Midwestern folks help these green thumbs along the way, but they are soon to realize the industry in which they are taking part is not very friendly at all. Corn, they discover, has altered America’s agricultural industry, economy, and health, in gargantuan ways. Government pressure to expand the production of corn in this country caused small farms to collapse and ignited the corn syrup industry responsible for sweetening some of our favorite junk foods. High fructose corn syrup, one of the main ingredients in soda, is particularly dangerous because of its ability to raise blood sugar levels and encourage obesity. Excess corn also replaced grass diets for the cattle we consume at our 4th of July BBQs, harming both the cows who are unable to digest grains and the human consumer who indirectly eats the growth hormones and antibiotics fed to the cow to keep it alive before slaughter. The film puts a whole new spin on the majestic fields of corn you imagine winding up on some family’s Thanksgiving table.

The real loser, beside the cattle that is force-fed food it can’t digest, is Timothy. Nearing the last day of school, Tim came in one morning looking awfully sullen and holding not his typical burger but a tupperware container. “What’s the matter?” I asked, staring down at his droopy brown eyes.

“I’ve got high blood sugar,” he replied rather disdainfully. He seemed most upset not because he was on his way to having juvenile diabetes but because his mother had sent him off to school with pasta salad for lunch and no money to buy a burger on the way to school. Tim’s case is sadly unremarkable, as people living in low-income neighborhoods are twice as likely to develop diabetes, no doubt because of proximity to the very fast-food restaurants and corner stores that stockpile foods high in corn syrup.

My first rule for next year is going to be “always be respectful and never drink soda.”