To help keep his weight up, I feed Freedom corn oil. He doesn’t need more energy, just more calories. Corn oil, bought at Costco is about the least expensive way to meet this need.
So how much corn goes into this 2.5 gallon container of corn oil? Quite a lot!
- 2.5 gallons of oil weighs about 21 pounds
- One bushel of corn yields approximately 1 1/2 pounds of oil (source: Wikipedia)
- So, this container contains about 14 bushels of corn!
- Since each bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds, that oil came from 780 pounds of corn.
Holy cow. Similar to the amount of corn necessary to feed a pound of beef for human consumption. Kind of makes you pause to think doesn’t it?
Something to bear in mind here, is that oil is a small fraction of the corn seed, the rest of it likely gets used for corn starch, corn syrup, animal feed etc, other uses for the starchy part.
sorry to respond twice, but I just finished Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, and it sure tells you more about corn than you’ll ever want to know, including why it’s a bad idea to put it in everything, maybe even your horse.
Something to bear in mind here, is that oil is a small fraction of the corn seed, the rest of it likely gets used for corn starch, corn syrup, animal feed etc, other uses for the starchy part. The comment about beef is an important one.