Corn Was Born to Serve

Quick Corn History: The ancients of Mexico called themselves "corn walking" because so much of their daily sustenance came from corn. (Actually, it was called maize back then.) A couple thousand years later, colonists in New England were learning the secrets of maize's beautiful bounty from a Native American named Squanto. Many early settlements would have perished without the successful cultivation and use of this crop and its byproducts. So, corn became king.

Corn is a special species with a few unique qualities in the plant world, including its carbon processing, extreme adaptability and huge returns on its "per seed" ratio when planted. But maize started out as an odd accident in nature, which involved a mutation of its ancestors' sex organs. Suddenly its flowers wanted to turn into kernals and the male organs were up in the tassels ready to fertilize on down, but there was a big new sheath of husk getting in the way.

Then, along came some wandering Pre-Columbian human, blessed with curiosity (what's hidden inside this husk?) and probably hunger (and can I eat it?) and opposable thumbs (oh yes, I can peel it, pick off the kernals to eat, and plant it, too) that helped humans evolve. This was the beginning of big things for maize...and men. Soon, corn would be worshipped throughout Mexico, and maximized with the movement of humans up through North America.

Kernals Gone Wild: Eventually, corn's influence spread like the internet. It became mats and blankets, flour for baking, feed for pigs, and mash to make whiskey. Even the empty cobs weren't wasted, they were stacked near the privy and used as toilet paper. Kind Squanto's act of community education turned out to be one of the Native Americans' ultimate undoings. When we knew how to do corn right, we didn't really need the Indians any more. We could move out across the land and conquer. Eventually, corn was used as payment in the slave trade.

Corn became, in it's willingness to serve us and adapt to our desires, our BFF. And we were grand stewards of its own evolution. Because maize cannot grow and multiply, without human intervention. If a whole cob falls to the ground (or is planted), say like an acorn, a new plant cannot form and thrive. One seed must be sown at a time--that's where the opposable thumbs come in. Field animals are of no help, as corn ears grow halfway up the stalk, and birds can't help either, due to those protective husks and silks over the kernals.

So. Americans and corn. We pretty much grew up together.

Now, after a couple hundred years, modern Americans are far more than corn walking--in The Omnivore's Dilemma, we learn we are more like a "corn chip, with legs".

We are the Frito Banditos: What started out as an incredible relationship between the hungry, curious human and the needy, satisfying corn plant, went awry. We kinda went crazy on corn. This is where our current topic of wellness comes in. We see how good thing becomes too much of a good thing, when you become a user, versus a grateful friend. In America, we use corn to the tune of about 65% of what most of us eat today. We've long surpassed the corn-loving Mexico, where many animals still graze on grass. Here we feed corn to almost all our animals. So when you eat chicken, ham or even eggs, you're eating a lot of corn. Dairy products--corn feeds the Holsteins. You've got your corn flour, corn oil, corn syrup, corn starch... oh, the list goes on.

We made icky margerine out of corn and turned corn into a bunch of hardly recognizable things, too. Preservatives and thickeners whose chemical names I can't pronounce. And now, corn is considered the most likely allergen in our society, and also, the most difficult to avoid. So, what's the lesson in all this?

To me, it's starts out that corn was once a perfectly fine species offering men many benefits. It's what men with machines and labs, and an increasing greedy thirst for power and dominion over other people and places, started doing to corn which fueled its potential downside.

Isn't that how it always goes? Like, we're all getting along, the party's going smooth, then in come the crashers who you thought were cool, but nooo, they have obnoxious habits and rude behavior and next thing you know there's a big fight in the backyard and the cops are at the door and someone puked all over your mom's new carpet.

Sometimes our curiosity (and clever thumbs) get the best of us and ruin it for ourselves. If it was hunger we were looking to conquer, corn was once the way to go. We just needed to have a healthy balanced respect for corn in the long run.

And we still can. This is a lesson in keeping it simple.

Choose Your Food-Friends Well:
Be true with your food. If you're not allergic, you can enjoy the company of your old friend corn without forcing it to dress up as a chicken nugget. If you hang out with just corn and get rid of the weird corn wannabes, you'll see, it's a nice time. This theme, I suspect, will continue in ongoing reviews of further chapters in this enlightening book: What are we eating? And why? (Like, who are we hanging out with, and why? We are, to a great degree, the company we keep, just like we are what we eat.)

I live in the corn belt. I can go to the market and buy sweet juicy ears just steps from where they are grown. Now you're talkin'. I want some corn-on-the-cob grilled, with jalapeno-lime butter, this summer. I might even try to grow some corn in our own garden. And maybe we'll whittle little pipes out of the cobs to blow bubbles from, and perhaps we can give handmade cornhusk dolls as holiday gifts this year.

Kidding on the corn growing and corn toy making. That sounds complicated.