Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we’ve designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.

Pollan is pointing to an agricultural logic—maximize yield per acre of a few commodity crops—that has quietly become the organizing principle of the modern American diet. Corn supplies abundant, inexpensive calories (often transformed into sweeteners, refined starches, feed for livestock, and frying oils), while soy supplies cheap protein and industrial ingredients. When policy, subsidies, and food manufacturing align around these efficiencies, the market becomes flooded with low-cost inputs that are easiest to sell as highly processed, calorie-dense foods. The quote critiques how “efficiency” at the farm level can translate into nutritional and public-health costs, shaping what is affordable and ubiquitous to eat.