Almost everything Americans eat contains corn: high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods are the staples of the modern diet. Ready for an adventure and alarmed by signs of their generation’s bulging waistlines, college friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis know where to go to investigate.

Eighty years ago, Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers lived just a few miles apart, in the same rural county in northern Iowa. Now their great-grandsons are returning with a mission: they will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what they—and all of us—are really made of.

Ian and Curt arrive in the Midwest enthusiastic about their new endeavor. Iowa’s newest farmers lease an acre of land from a skeptical landlord and fill out a pile of paperwork to sign up for subsidies. The government will pay them $28 to grow their acre of corn—the first of many steps that reinforce the idea that more corn is what America needs.

King Corn is their feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives the nation.

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.

Prime spoke with Curt Ellis in advance of the television debut of their powerful film.

When will the film be available for public consumption, either for sale or on television?

King Corn is available on DVD through our website, www.kingcorn.net and will be airing on the PBS series Independent Lens on April 15. There are some theatrical dates coming up, too, and those are on our website, kingcorn.net

How has your life changed since making the movie?

I’ve changed the way I eat pretty significantly, and that’s a big change. In college I used to make a daily pilgrimage to Dunkin Donuts, and I ate my share of fast food. Now I’m really careful about what I put in my body. I don’t eat corn-fed beef, and I try to avoid high-fructose corn syrup (except for ketchup, of course). I want to eat food that was grown by a farmer I can put a face on.

The movie starts with a scene of you having your hair tested — what was that all about?

Ian and I had our hair tested when we first started work on the movie. There’s a science called Mass Spectrometry that helps you analyze your diet. It turned out that I was 53% corn and Ian was 58% corn. We’ve dropped a fair amount since we changed our diets and stopped eating fast food. I’m now 39% corn, and Ian’s 44%. I think he sneaks out at night for burgers.

Do you see any chance of the corn kingdom changing?

The system will change as soon as we decide to change it. Certainly as consumers we can do something, but fresh fruits and vegetables and farmers markets are expensive these days, and that’s largely the result of government policy. The real thing we can all do is put pressure on our legislators (and presidential candidates!) to reform the Farm Bill. Right now, we’re subsidizing fast food. We spent more than $50 billion in the last ten years subsidizing corn, and now we’re paying for it all again, with half of all obesity-related medical costs being shouldered by Medicare and Medicaid.

What memory will you always have from this experience?

That giant feedlot in Colorado. I had no idea that my meat came from a place like that. 100,000 cows standing shoulder-to-shoulder in their own waste, eating corn. It was like a vision of Hell.

With all that you know now, as well as some life-changing experiences, would you two do it again and make all the sacrifices it had to have taken?

Ha! Well, it turns out that being a corn-star isn’t particularly glamorous, but I’m glad I know what I know now. I kind of think everyone should take a year and find out where their food is coming from.

What’s next for you two?

Ian and I are releasing a new film. It’s called The Greening of Southie, and it tells the story of the men and women who built Boston’s first residential Green Building. It’s in festivals now, and will air on the Sundance Channel’s The Green series on Earth Day.

King Corn is available on DVD through their website www.kingcorn.net and airs on the PBS series Independent Lens on April 15.

Corn Facts

• Number of acres planted in corn in the U.S. in 1970: 66.9 million
• Number of acres planted in 2004: 80.9 million
• Number in 2007: 92.9 million
• Percent change since 1970: +39
• Rank of refined sugar, or sucrose, among most-used sweeteners in the U.S. in 1966: 1
• Rank of high-fructose corn syrup in 2007: 1
• Estimated percentage of high-fructose corn syrup consumed from beverages: 66
• Rank of soft drinks among top beverages consumed by Americans: 1
• Minimum percentage of a soda that is made up of high-fructose corn syrup: 7
• Maximum percentage: 14
• Percentage by which high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper than sugar: 60
• Average, in pounds, of high-fructose corn syrup consumed by an American in 1970: 0.6
• Average, in pounds, consumed in 2000: 73.5