Game: Food Inc.

Food Inc. is a powerful movie describing everything you never wanted to know about where our food really comes from.
Michael Pollan, in his brilliant bestseller "The Omnivore's Dilemma", described exactly how ubiquitous is our friend, corn: High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is in everything from ketchup to Coke; cattle, who are ruminants and should only eat grass, are corn-fed (sounds wholesome, doesn't it?); ethanol, a corn sugar, is made into gasoline, and the list goes on.  In fact he describes a McDonald's meal this way:
"This is how the laboratory measured our meal: soda (100% corn), milk shake (78%), salad dressing (65%), chicken nuggets (56%), cheeseburger (52%), and French fries (23%). What in the eyes of the omnivore looks like a meal of impressive variety turns out, when viewed through the eyes of the mass spectrometer, to be the meal of a far more specialized kind of eater"
Disturbing, isn't it?

Supersize Me is a film by Morgan Spurlock in which he documents his experiment with an only-McDonald's diet for a month.  At the beginning of the month, he is tested by doctors and is certified a slim, healthy man.  By the end of the month he is near death.

I wanted the students to go on a journey from corn to hospital following four different routes: HFCS, beef, pork and tomatoes.  I designed a board game where each of the four players starts out as an ear of corn.  Then each one follows a different path: HFCS, cow feed, pig feed, transportation and refrigeration for tomatoes.  Along each path are cards that you can pick up to find the story. 
All paths lead to the hospital where you select a card.  If you're lucky, you survive.  If not, you die of diabetes, heart disease, cancer or E coli.