Eating to Live!

Corn controversy

Thursday morning, while nursing a sinus headache at home, I caught a segment of “Good Morning America” during an interview with two college buddies who created a documentary of their experience with growing an acre of corn. The film, titled “King Corn,” opened in New York City today and has yet to make its way across the country, although a DVD of the film may be available soon.

The issue of corn was first brought to my attention from the book, which I’ve mentioned before in this blog, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by Michael Pollan. Pollan, it turns out, is also in the film. It is interesting to note that it is not the corn on the cob that we revel in during the height of the season near the latter part of summer, but is actually the way corn has been industrialized to be a part of nearly everything we touch and eat. Processed corn is included in packaging and in just about all of our food products, including the high fructose corn syrup used by most food companies as a sweetener and preservative. It also is in our toothpaste (zorbital).

If you see some of these food additives on the ingredient lists on your food, chances are it is made from processed corn: Dextrin or Dextrose, Fumaric or Lactic acid, Glucose, Glycerine, Hydrolyzed vegetable protein, Lecithin, Linoleic acid, Malt, Maltodextrin, Maltose or Maltol, Mannitol, Polydextrose, Polysorbates, Potassium gluconate, Propylene glycol monostearate, Sodium ascorbate or other ascorbates, Sodium stearoyl fumarate, Sodium-, Magnesium-, Calcium- or Potassium-fumarate, Stearyl citrate, and Tocopherol (alpha-Tocopherol, vitamin E). And this list is not all inclusive.

Corn is also used as animal feed from everything to beef cattle, chickens and even farm-raised fish. Pollan explained in his book that corn is not a natural food for cattle and in fact, a diet of corn can be deadly for the animal affecting its liver and damaging its immune system leaving it open for disease. For this reason, most beef cattle are also given antibiotics.

Why is there so much corn in everything? Processed corn is cheap and easy to come by. And since the cost to grow corn, including the use of pesticides and herbicides not to mention the cost of buying genetically engineered sterile seed each year, is higher than the market value of that same commodity. To accommodate the farmers’ loss, they receive government subsidies so they can continue to grow corn and keep the industrial food companies in business.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet found a reason to be concerned about all the processed corn we are exposed to and are eating each day. Even so, some medical experts and scientists, as well as researchers like Pollan, are concerned that processed corn is somehow related to the countries growing problem with obesity, as well as allergies and other medical conditions, including Type II Diabetes. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole subject, but I find it interesting just the same.

I began Thursday fully intending to go to the gym and to work, but my sinus headache got the best of me. I nursed it instead at home most of the day; although I did leave for a while to seek out the opinion of a friend concerning the “corn controversy.” She made sandwiches for lunch with white bread that was purchased on sale at a local market. I didn’t ask to see the ingredient list.

Later for dinner, I reheated a frozen piece of wild salmon (remember the farmed salmon and their corn-fed diets?) along with some mashed cauliflower and asparagus and mixed a small bowl of fruit with fresh pineapple and California strawberries.