Not long ago, a reader wrote in with an interesting response to one of my many articles condemning industrially grown corn.
Yes, you can buy it!
Photo: iStockphoto
"When sweet corn appears at the farmers' market next summer, can I buy it in good conscience?" she wanted to know. "Or is it bad for me and bad for the land?"
I can see why she might be confused. Even as U.S. farmers prepare for what will almost certainly be the largest concentrated corn harvest in world history, criticism has rained down like fertilizer on an Iowa corn patch. Michael Pollan placed corn at the center of what he called "our national eating disorder" in his best-selling Omnivore's Dilemma. I've personally joined the chorus tying corn to everything from the obesity epidemic to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, and to the "biggest greenwash ever," ethanol.
Next thing you know, I'll be trying to link corn to the calamities unfolding in Iraq. Wait -- someone already has. Global warming? Ditto.
Thus corn is, in some sense, bad -- evil, even. But before we shuffle this common crop into the ash heap of history -- where it will reside next to cigarette smoking and other indecencies -- it might be time to rethink the process by which we embrace and then demonize food and other substances we ingest.
I've identified an insidious pattern in U.S. food culture: Take a perfectly wonderful foodstuff, industrialize its production and strip it of most nutrients, sell it in titanic quantities, create a health scare -- and then demonize it. It's the process through which what's good for you becomes bad.
Beyond Good and Evil
Consider the case of butter. When I was a kid in the 1970s, a near-hysteria to ban butter from home kitchens held sway. Butter raised cholesterol, the logic went, and thus caused heart disease. Better to slather your toast with margarine -- vegetable oil contrived to remain solid at room temperature by an industrial process called "partial hydrogenation." Obeying the best health information available to them, my parents stuck mainly to margarine, backsliding to the natural product only occasionally.
Of course, the demonization of butter wasn't completely irrational. I remember how copiously my grandparents used butter. It went on everything: bologna was fried in it, and then placed between two well-buttered slices of white bread. I don't recall lettuce or any other vegetables going on those sandwiches; a slice of "American cheese" was more likely. They even buttered Pop-Tarts! Meanwhile, dairy operations were just beginning to confine lactating cows in feedlots en masse and replace grass-based diets with grain, a feeding strategy we now know reduces the quality of the fat contained in dairy products.
At the time, heart-disease rates were surging. But rather than advising people to moderate butter consumption or evaluating these new methods of dairy production, the U.S. medical establishment urged consumers to switch to a synthetic substitute that the food industry was only too happy to produce.
With margarine, you could slather your toast with fat guilt-free. But no one, including my grandparents, did themselves a favor by switching to partially hydrogenated fat -- one foodstuff that may truly qualify as demonic. Not surprisingly, by the 1980s, when it became clear that the switch to margarine wasn't curtailing heart-disease rates, a backlash against fat itself gained force.
This culminated in one of the most ignominious phases of U.S. culinary history: the "low-fat" craze. And once again, industrial food was there to help.
Up and down the supermarket aisle, food processors hawked "low-fat" versions of everything they could think of: pudding and cake and potato chips and breakfast cereal. Remember low-fat ice cream? I can even recall seeing the phrase "fat-free" screaming from a can of frozen, concentrated orange juice -- as if oranges had fat anyway.
The low-fat fad may mark the last instance when consumers really believed that food-processing conglomerates could actually improve the raw food that grows from the dirt. For me, the trend peaked when I found a jar of something called "fat-free guacamole" in my mother's fridge in the early 1990s. Guys in white lab coats, employed by who knows what industrial-food titan, had "perfected" the avocado by stripping it of fat. Never mind that the very fat they trashed is precisely what makes avocados an incredibly delicious and health-giving food.
False Choices
My mother, to her credit, has long since rejected "low-fat" processed garbage. Indeed, there's a growing understanding that the food industry offers mostly false choices: between, say, cheap, nutritionally suspect butter from corn-stuffed cows, and equal amounts of heart-wrecking butter-like "spread." Our butter-margarine journey is just one example of such choices -- even beer and cigarettes, justly demonized in the form of Miller Lite and Marlboro, started out as relatively benign agricultural products before industry got to them.
Now people are relearning a lesson that's been largely forgotten since the post-war explosion of industrial food: that quality matters -- and that food quality derives from growing practices. Butter made from the milk of grass-fed cows, for instance, is fundamentally different from the stuff churned out in vast quantities by the mega-dairy operations.
Moreover, the idea that moderation trumps substitution with synthetic knockoffs is gaining traction. Even the most pristinely produced butter will likely cause harm if you add a thick layer to everything you eat. But a bit of well-made butter spread on freshly baked bread, or baked into biscuits for a weekend treat -- those are sublime experiences that hardly threaten health.
The key is respect. Butter is a powerful, nutritionally dense food, and needs to be treated as such. Which brings us back to corn.
Widely regarded as one of the great triumphs in the history of plant domestication, corn nourished the thriving cultures of Mesoamerica for millennia. Even today, despite contamination from genetically modified U.S. seeds, Mexico harbors a dizzying variety of corn types. Its citizens who follow a traditional diet, based on flavorful varieties of whole corn processed into tortillas using an ancient method, remain significantly healthier than other Mexicans who embrace a U.S.-style diet.
So we can't blame Mexico's "food of the gods" for our surging obesity, our damaged farmland, or our troubled gulf waters. Our problem doesn't stem from corn, but rather the abusive way we grow it, process it, and put it into nearly everything on our supermarket shelves. When they're selling corn on the cob at the farmers' market this summer, embrace it. You can be sure it's a different variety from the mass-produced stuff -- and bred for flavor, not ease of processing.
¡ Viva el maíz ! May it survive the U.S. food system's deadening embrace.
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Comments
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laurenmcnees Posted 4:52 am
10 May 2007
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ekolmus Posted 5:56 am
10 May 2007
Foods that have been altered to remove their naturally occurring fat have more than likely had something else added to preserve the taste, and that something is generally 1) high fructose corn syrup, 2) salt, 3) artificial colorings and flavorings, or 4) partially hydrogenated vegetable fats.
That's why Tom was criticizing the low-fat food fad - because of the processed crap that we let into our lives in the name of "healthier eating".
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karenc Posted 6:01 am
10 May 2007
Karen
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acorn Posted 6:54 am
10 May 2007
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akbeancounter Posted 10:09 am
10 May 2007
As pressed for time as we Americans claim to be, we love bumper-sticker diet plans. Anything that can be explained in five syllables or less, and promises spectacular results with minimal effort, we'll do it. So when we hear that "don't eat fat" or "don't eat carbs" is the fast ticket to Slimville, we're all over it. Unfortunately, "Natural foods, daily exercise" doesn't seem to make the cut. Sure, it takes time and will power, but the thesis isn't all that hard to grasp.
But of course, the processed food world is all too happy to oblige our crazy-ass diet plans. I can appreciate Tom's low-fat guac story; two years ago I saw a bottle of low-carb catsup. "Only two [grams of] carb[ohydrate]s per serving!" (I can't stand marketing jargon.) Curiously enough, the normal catsup, made by the same company, also had two grams of carbohydrates, but cost about half as much. When everything from celery to mayonnaise to buckets of chicken define themselves as healthy, it's probably time to find a new dictionary.
Back to the point of the post, though: if you know anything about the processed foods industry, you should know by now that everything they do is done in the name of cutting costs, boosting yield, and maintaining consistency. Flavor and texture don't matter a bit.
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Mike Breen Posted 11:22 am
10 May 2007
Don't forget that the war in Iraq made us aware of the fact that "we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." I now cringe when I hear that phrase because I think that this ethanol boom is probably gonna do more harm than good. Consider the "tortilla crisis" going on in Mexico; anyone else think that's just gonna contribute more to our immigration woes?
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lexington Posted 12:04 pm
10 May 2007
I just wanted to make a comment regarding corn being one of the 'triumphs' of humans domestication of plants. There are common misconceptions regarding how 'triumphant' corn domestication actually was for the health of native americans.
Within Jared Diamonds book, The Third Chimpanzee - a book I thoroughly recommend, he addresses the common misconceptions regarding corn domestication, I will quote him directly since it is researched and valid:
"Corn, first domesticated in Central America thousands of year ago, became the basis of intensive farming in those valleys around A.D. 1000. Until then, Indian hunter-gatheres had skeltons 'so health it is somewhat discouraging to work with them,' as one paleopathologist complained. With the arrival of corn, Indian skeletons suddenly became interesting to study. The number of cavities in an average adult's mouth jumped from fewer than one to nearly seven, and tooth loss and abscesses became rampant. Enamel defects in children's milk teeth imply that pregnant and nursing mothers were severly undernourished. Anemia quadrupled in frequency; tuberculosis became established as an epidemic disease; half the population suffered from osteoarthritis and other degenerative diseases...Thus corn, usually considered the New World's blessing, actually proved to be a public-health disaster....They are in effect, cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition. Today just three high-carbohydrate plants - wheat, rice, and corn - provide more than 50 percent of the calories consumed by the human species"
- It seems as though unfortunately our soceity is going through again a similar phase of health issues that hunter-gatheres experienced when they transitioned to plant domestication. Our great dependence on corn, or I should say 'supplier induced' dependence on corn through gov't subsidies has resulted in a large majority of our population consuming, as Diamond says - empty calories at the cost of nutrition.
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Christine Gardner Posted 12:09 pm
10 May 2007
I love summer.
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Tom Philpott Posted 12:50 pm
10 May 2007
By corn as a triumph of domestication, I meant the actual act of transforming teosinte, the wild-grass progenitor to corn, into a concentrated source of protein and other nutrients. As to traditionally grown corn's nutritional value, I can only point to evidence that present-day Mesoamericans, when they make the switch from old diets to new-fangled U.S. ones. show a steep decline in health--not unlike that of their ancestors who switched from hunter-gatherer fare to corn.
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Earth Shaman Posted 3:16 pm
10 May 2007
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:26 pm
10 May 2007
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jcbflowers Posted 10:22 pm
10 May 2007
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zacaroni Posted 1:45 am
11 May 2007
Also: what happens if some sort of virus or bacteria or something should suddenly wipe out corn? World hunger?
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lexington Posted 2:16 am
11 May 2007
Thanks Tom for your comments, you seemed to summarize what I was trying to say. Perhaps I didn't clarify that the movement to ag from hunter gatherer, the decline was due to the decline in variety of foodstuffs - which I feel seems to be becoming overwhelmingly similar to todays food economy and the increased use of corn within everything from coca-cola to yogourt. Ek! Very scary to me.
And it seems that corns association with all things 'wonderful' continues. I am currently reading "The Way We Eat, Why Our Food Choices Matter" by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Within their book, I found it interesting to note that farmers have attributed the growth of factory farm to government subsidies on corn which have kept their prices artificially low. U.S. bulk corn sells for 4 cents a pound (in 2006, stat from Singer) which is less than the cost of producing it - therefore, it is taxpayers who are producing this corn. These corn subsidies result not only in abhorrent conditions for factory farm animals, but it also wreaks havoc on the environment. Cows farmed for beef who naturally eat grass are instead given corn kernels, which require chemical fertilizers. So instead of using grass naturally harvested from the sun it creates increased emissions of fossil fuels - and we all know what that means. Not only that, they have to be given a daily dose of antibiotics so that they don't get 'feedlot bloat' because their physiology is not made to break down corn kernels - and can suffocate the animal, not to mention these antibiotics end up in the meat that people eat. As well, the run off of feces and urine from factory farm animals destroys local environments, not only for residents due to the stench but also local ecosystems - one example they present is pig farming in NC. In the summer of 1995, pigs in NC were producing 19 millions tons of waste per year (they are the second largest producer of pigs in the nation)! The unusually wet summer resulted in spilled animal waste, killing 10 MILLION fish in North Carolina! And this is just one little incident in one area...
I feel that the largest issue with corn is the gov't subsidies, roughly $41 billion between 1995-2004 (http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/09harvest.html) h by Washington, it seems to produce this cyclical pattern of horrible externalities from environmental degradation to vile factory farm conditions to reducing the quality of foods. If the gov't didn't prop up the industry through subsidies, these artificial market signals would not enable inefficient, over-production of the crop that results in corn being found in much of the food industry, allows factory farms to expand their operations to produce more meat, which is of poorer quality. And these are just the issues within North America, it shouldn't be forgotten that these subsidies result in artificially low priced commodities being dumped on developing countries. Food aid from the US, and many other countries is simply buying up their excess production (which are being produced inefficiently), which ends up destroying local economies within developing nations because small farmers cannot compete with these low prices - thereby creating a dependency on exported inefficiently produced commodities from elsewhere when in fact, these nations could meet their own agricultural needs much more easily without these articifical markets which are created by corn subsidies. And I still haven't addressed the issue of Ethanol! I am from Canada, and my gov't has pledged $2 billion for ethanol production - ignoring recent reports that have been published stating that ethanol is in fact worse for the environment than gasoline when the whole process is examined. So frustrating. I just find it mind boggling the damage that these subsidies can do and the ignorance of gov't to look the other way on the issue.
I was wondering if anyone can shed some light on the politics or reasons why the US and Europe continue to allow these false market signals to continue when the damage they are doing both locally and worldwide is so well documented. Is it unions, or trying to keep employment levels up? I have heard that unions within Europe are quite strong, but I don't know the case for the US - particularly for corn. Anwyays, I would love to know anything or sources of information that could provide me with more information on it.
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mish16 Posted 4:10 am
11 May 2007
I read in the Omnivore's Dilemma that the government used to have a loan program for corn farmers that helped balance out the good/bad crop years, but then in the sixties it switched to the straight subsidy payments. Does anyone know what caused that? Anyway, the subsidies mean that, no matter how low the price of corn goes, the only way for a farmer to make more money is to grow more corn, because the government will still pay him for it. The subsidy is also why many farmers have switched to monoculture, growing only the crops that are guaranteed by the gov't to bring in money.
So now we have a bunch of farmers just getting by on the subsidies (they're certainly not getting rich off them), so there's also got to be pressure on the government to keep these farmers in business. So where can the government go from here? They can't just do away with the subsidies, so can they lower them a little at a time? It's such a complicated situation, that it's hard to predict what would happen. More expensive Happy Meals? I'm inspired to write a letter to Congress, but I'm not sure what to ask them to do. Any ideas????
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Stephanie Ogburn Posted 11:05 pm
11 May 2007
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Roz Cummins Posted 11:55 am
13 May 2007
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ditchlily Posted 8:54 am
14 May 2007
Along those narrative lines, I was thinking about another scary one the other day - from the producer, versus the consumer side of the fence. And I guess that the point here is that on either side, narratives get keyed into economic and industrial structures, too.
For example, who is to say that even more sustainable biofuels for ethanol (like those from cellulosic sources, such as switchgrass) won't get plugged into an existing industrial, mono-crop structure? What's to stop companies like Monsanto from engineering some super-switchgrass, patenting it, and trapping farmers into that limited production model? (Versus developing switchgrass or cellulosic sources in diversity and moderation, say.) Renewables have a lot of potential, but the existing narratives, or models, present a lot of challenges for implementation in a just and moderate manner.
Sorry about the trip down conspiracy lane. But sometimes I worry.
Lily
ditch_lily
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Bobbi Katsanis Posted 1:38 am
15 May 2007
Because our schools do not teach young people critical thinking skills, the majority of U.S. citizens are vulnerable to this kind of emotional pressure (think of the myriad ways in which 9/11 has been manipulated).
Sooner or later, a not-very-well-informed person (one of my brothers fits this description; he has a high-school education) quits listening to any of it, considers it all "junk science," and has no way of evaluating any of the information about food and health coming their way, shrugs their shoulders and eats whatever they want (which they are programmed to want by TV advertising). I bet if you mapped education levels and obesity rates, you would find an incredible overlap.
It's not a conspiracy, exactly (although many of the patterns of food-processing ownership of Cargill et al., called "vertical integration" in the industry) are incredibly predatory and strategic, designed to screw everyone from small farmers to consumers. Oh, excuse me, for "screw" read "make a HEALTHY profit for shareholders." It isn't healthy for anybody else--not your body, not the land, not the small farmers.
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Jahnets Posted 4:11 am
15 May 2007
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Storm Dragon Posted 5:45 pm
15 May 2007
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Mark Powell Posted 4:36 am
08 Jun 2007
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