Hot Docs 2009

For the first time in American history, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney's generation are at risk of having a shorter lifespan than their parents. The reason is diet. In some form-as starch, gluten, syrup, sweetener, juice or even meat-corn has infiltrated America's food system and is dominating the diet. Hair provides the testimony, as one strand is a tape recorder of what we eat. In the case of these two best friends from college, the dominance of corn in their hair is enough to propose a mission: move to Iowa and grow an acre of America's most productive, subsidized grain. Over the course of a year, they follow their commodity crop from its raw material harvest, to the industrial processor, to the stomachs of less mobile, corn-fed cows, and finally, to the grocery store shelf. King Corn pours the syrupy truth over an amiable, totally digestive dish of grassroots operation. While fast food is farmed in America's heartland, its people hungrily devour it, unaware of how much corn they are in fact growing on top of their heads.