With the exception of salt and a handful of synthetic chemical food additives, most grocery items are a link in a food chain that begins with a plant, animal, or sea creature. In the produce aisle, and even in the fish and meat department, it’s easy to trace the genesis of the foods presented for purchase.
Not so with processed foods. The industrial food chain that now feeds most of us most of the time, whether in a supermarket or restaurant, inevitably leads to the American Corn Belt.
It all comes down to the facts of the food chain: the actual elements that included the industrial food chain that supplies our fast-paced world. Corn is grown on 80 million acres of American land and has replaced wheat as one of the major government subsidies to the American farmer. The reason we grow so much corn? Due to the multiple ways it can be processed in our food.
For example, the corn now feeds the steer that eventually becomes its steak. Hence, eggs, milk, cheese, and yogurt are now paired with corn. Also feed the pig, turkey, lamb. Incredible as it may seem, fish, natural carnivores, are being redesigned to tolerate corn in fish farms.
Processed foods provide more manifestations of corn. Consider a chicken nugget: the chicken was fed corn; modified cornstarch holds the kernel together; the cornmeal is in the dough; and fried in corn oil.
The most commonly served drink in fast food restaurants is soda, filled with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), a highly processed corn sweetener.
Consider the following list of food additives and you will see that corn is everywhere: in modified or unmodified starch; in glucose syrup, maltodextrin, crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid; in lecithin, dextrose, lactic acid and lysine; in MSG maltose and polyols, caramel color and xanthan gum.
Therefore, corn is found in soups, snacks, condiments, frozen yogurt, coffee clarifier, salad dressings, even vitamins! And you’ll also find non-food items made from corn, from toothpaste and cosmetics to garbage bags and disposable diapers.
It is important to note that corn is not a vegetable. It is a grain or a carbohydrate and, as such, corn is very rich in sugar. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is too high in carbohydrates / sugar to begin with, and corn is a major contributor to the growing obesity and diabetes epidemic.
It’s hard to escape from ‘The King of Corn’. If you eat processed or fast food, rest assured that you are consuming corn in one of its many forms.
And it is no accident that when Native American Indians first learned about corn and switched from a hunter’s diet to one based on corn, their bones, teeth, and joints began to deteriorate.
The negatives of corn’s dominance in the standard American diet come close to a litany. It’s also important to understand that corn is second only to soybeans as the most genetically modified (GM) crop in the US.
GMO foods, foods derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs), were introduced in 1995 and, sadly, no human studies have yet been conducted to show what happens when these types of foods are consumed over time.
You can’t go wrong when you eat food that actually looks like food. Avoid fast and processed foods. Eat minimally. If you eat meat, look for grass-fed animals and always avoid farmed fish. Get into the habit of reading food labels carefully. With a little diligence you can avoid being a minion of the Corn King.
For more (fascinating and terrifying) information about the food chains that sustain us, and a clear picture of the way Americans eat, from source to plate, wrapper or Big Gulp, Michael Pollan’s The omnivore’s dilemma it’s a great read
