Archive for the ‘Corn’ Category

As Michael Pollan points out in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma we get way too much corn in our diet. The heavily processed corn in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, corn oil, corn-fed meat, and numerous other forms add to our ill health. From everything that I have read I would suggest you avoid all these forms of corn products.

That said; don’t neglect corn in its natural state. When eaten whole, corn kernels are actually a whole grain and high in fiber, niacin, thiamine, and folate.

Skip the pesticide-redden, monoculture corn at your supermarket. Shop your local farmer’s market.

When corn is the only crop grown on a piece of land, the land loses it nutrients. Fertilizers only replace five or six of the 80 plus nutrients needed for healthy soil. Plus monoculture corn needs pesticides to survive.

Enjoy corn before it is processed.

It’s everywhere! What are you eating?

Despite the great variety of “foods” in the supermarket, it all comes back to corn.

Corn is the feed the steer eats that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia. And today it even feeds the salmon, a carnivore by nature that fish farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The cows that once grazed on grass are now fed corn. (1)

Now these salmon which once fed in the open waters are farm-raised on corn. The danger comes from the corn that does not contain omega-3 but rather omega-6. So when you buy farm raised salmon you are getting more omega-6. To get salmon for omega-3 you must buy wild salmon. The problem arises when we should be eating a ratio of one part omega-3 to 2 or 3 parts omega-6, we’re actually getting one part omega-3 to 17 to 25 parts omega-6. Omega-3 lowers inflammation. Omega-6 raises inflammation. Inflammation in the arteries helps create plaque and the possibilities of stroke and heart disease. Omega-3 reduces inflammation and lowers cholesterol.

(1)    Pollan, Michael, The Omnivores Dilemma, Penguin Books, 2006, p. 18

 If this saying is true, we’re mostly corn—or a form of processed corn. Mexicans have called themselves the “corn people” because so much of their sustenance comes from corn. Now we find that we too are “corn people”.

The same scientists who can tell the composition of ancient diets from mummified human remains can do the same with us by taking a snippet of hair or a fingernail. Science works by identifying stable isotopes of carbon in human tissue that bear the signatures of different types of plants that originally took them from the air and introduced them into the food chain.

Carbon is the most common element in our bodies after water. The atoms of carbon from which we’re made were floating in the air, part of the carbon dioxide molecule.

The energy is stored in the form of carbon molecules and measured in calories. The calories we eat, whether in an ear of corn or a steak, are nothing less than little packets of energy once captured by a plant. When we examine where it all comes from we find that corn is one of the most viable grasses for sustaining life.

If this is a subject you would like to pursue I would highly recommend Michael Pollan’s book OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA. This information comes from his book.