It's All About the Corn

We are what we eat
Todd Dawson, a plant biologist at the University of California-Berkeley, can test a strand of hair to determine how much corn is in your diet or mine by looking for a form of carbon found in corn.  If he tested the hair of most Americans he would find around 69-70% corn based carbon.  Sound like a lot?  It should, but it is typical of most Americans thanks to the SAD (Standard American Diet).  In comparison, Europeans eat a diet with far fewer processed foods and corn-based sweeteners. Dawson tested his own hair after three months in Italy: 5 percent corn.

"We're like corn chips walking because we really have a very, very large fraction of corn in our diets, and we actually can't help it because it's an additive in so many of the foods we find on the market shelves," Dawson says.

Video Link --> Did You Know It Was All About the Corn?

"I think where the danger comes in with corn is that much of the corn grown now in North America is going into making high fructose corn syrup," Dawson says. "So it's not that corn per se is bad, but it's the sweetener made from corn that gets into many of the foods that Americans are probably consuming too much of, and we now see that showing up as obesity and heart disease and potential for type 2 diabetes."

To be fair, the Corn Refiners Association points out that "many parts of the world, including Mexico and Europe, have rising rates of obesity and diabetes, despite having little or no high fructose corn syrup in their foods and drinks."

So if it's not just the HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) then what, if any, is the connection between  the ever increasing amount of corn in our food and the growing epidemic of diet related health problems? 

Humans are omnivores.  We are meant to eat a variety of plant and animal based foods to meet our nutritional requirements.  By limiting the diversity of the foods that we eat we become more susceptible to nutritional deficiencies.  Those deficiencies lead to health problems. 


Just what foods do we find corn in?
American fast food is almost entirely produced from corn according to a chemical analysis of dishes served at McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using the same techniques of Dr. Dawson from UC-Berkeley, researchers tested fast food to determine the origin of molecules present in hamburgers, chicken, and fries.  Hope Jahren and Rebecca Kraft, authors of the study, found corn to be the almost exclusive food source of the beef and chicken served in fast food restaurants! 

In fact, studies show that corn can be found in at least 1/4 of the food products in our stores! 

Unfortunately, it is not the natural, old fashioned corn that our ancestors ate. 

How is corn today different than in the past?

Between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, Native Americans living in what is now Mexico began domesticating teosinte, or the "grain of the gods," as the name has been interpreted to mean. Scientists cannot yet say how long this domestication process took, but they do know that around 4,500 years ago, a plant recognizable as today's corn was present across the Americas.

By selectively breeding each generation, ancient farmers drastically changed teosinte's appearance, yield, grain quality and survivability—culminating in today's "corn." In fact, teosinte is so unlike modern corn, 19th century botanists did not even consider the two to be related.

Researchers have identified corn genes that were preferentially selected by Native Americans during the course of the plant's domestication from its grassy relative, teosinte, (pronounced "tA-O-'sin-tE") to the single-stalked, large-eared plant we know today. The study revealed that of the 59,000 total genes in the corn genome, approximately 1,200 were preferentially targeted for selection during its domestication. The study, by University of California, Irvine's Brandon Gaut and his colleagues, appeared in the journal, Science.

In the first decades of the 20th century plant scientists began developing new species of crops by crossing one "pure" strain with another. By the 1930s, just as the Depression began, they began to sell the new varieties to farmers.  The first hybrid seeds were very expensive, but they grew into good corn.

Before the Dust Bowl days, farmers harvested about 35 to 40 bushels of corn per acre. With hybrid seeds, innovations in irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides have pushed corn yields to over 150 bushels per acre and more.

We're producing more corn.  Why is this a problem, exactly?
How many of you have noticed gas prices lately?  In the United States, a quarter to a third of a gallon of oil goes into every bushel of corn.  And  here in America, we grow lots of corn.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), nearly 12 billion bushels of corn are harvested in the United States which will be used for a diverse array of products including livestock feed, ethanol and plastic consumer items, as well as food.  With all this corn we have to find things to do with it. 

One example is our beef.  American consumers like having high fat content in their beef, especially in the form of marbling. To do this, cattle are fed a very specialized diet, a diet which deserves our attention.

The next time you are driving through the country and you see some cattle in a field, look at what they are eating. They are eating grass. Cattle are perfectly suited to eat grass. Unlike humans, cattle stomachs (all 4 of them) are perfectly adapted to eating tough, incredibly fibrous grass that human stomachs simply cannot break down.

Corn, however, is very harmful to cattle in the long term, and cattle in feedlots do not eat grass; they eat corn. Why? Because corn has very high carbohydrate levels, and that leads to fat which is what consumers want.   One would think it cheaper to just feed cattle grass, which is free, than to feed them corn, which is not free.  And is it not cheaper to feed the cattle what they are meant to eat and to not have to pay to have veterinarians medicate them?

You'd be wrong to think that.  Corn is incredibly cheap. Like, pennies on the bushel cheap. How did it come to be?  In 1972, the United States had a bumper crop of grain, particularly corn. However, Russia was in the midst of a famine. So, the United States decided to sell the Soviet Union our surplus, some 200-400 tons.

Unfrotunately, we now had a problem.  Secretary Butz needed to maintain a high level of grain production, thus preventing any shortages, and still have farmers gain a profit. Enter the 1973 Farm Bill.

This bill did two very important things. The first thing it did was that it promised the farmers that the government would buy any excess crops. Farmers normally did not like excess crops because that was wasted money. If the government promised to buy whatever went unused by the market, the farmers would try to grow as much as possible, thus helping to guarantee a surplus and helping to avoid a shortage. The second thing the bill did was to allow the government to set prices on most grain crops, including corn. So, thanks to Secretary Butz’s 1973 Farm Bill, the United States was guaranteed a surplus of corn.

Flash forward to today.  Remember the hybird seeds from the 1930's?  Well, today's corn is primarily GMO corn.  There is a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding genetically modified foods and when one of them is in at least 1/4 of food products in our grocery stores we have to stop and ask; are genetically modified foods good for us?  Safety assessment of GM foods has been based on the idea of "substantial equivalence" meaning that "if a new food is found to be substantially equivalent in composition and nutritional characteristics to an existing food, it can be regarded as safe as the conventional food."  With this very basic definition of "safety" as the guide, research continues to disagree on the level of "safety" in GMO foods.

The scientists involved in GMSAFOOD, a research project funded by the EU for the past three years, had the objective of using biomarkers to carry out a more thorough search for potential adverse effects of GM food on health. Biomarkers are biological traits of an organism that can be measured objectively and can indicate potential abnormal processes in the body. They include simple anatomical traits like growth rate, and certain substances in the body that can indicate immunological or allergic reactions to a food. The aim was to identify suitable biomarkers in the animal experiment using pigs, mice and salmon that can indicate negative health effects, and to test whether they can be used in humans with the help of modern bioinformatics methods. The biomarkers could then be used to conduct more sensitive checks for actual effects of approved GM foods on humans and animals as part of post market monitoring.

At a press conference in Vienna on March 2012, an international research consortium reported that it had not found any harmful health effects of GM food in animals. In their studies the scientists investigated potential long-term risks associated with feeding genetically modified Bt maize MON810 and a GM pea to pigs, salmon and mice. Through their research they now hope to find suitable biomarkers that can be used as more sensitive indicators to detect harmful effects of authorised GM foods in humans.  

Countering that research, a study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences showed that GM food is indeed contributing to the obesity epidemic.

While being one of the first to report on a comparative analysis of blood and organ system data of rats fed GM corn, the study attempted to effectively end the debate as to whether GMO foods are safe regarding health. The study found that GM corn fed to mice led to an increase in overall body weight of about 3.7 percent, while also increasing the weight of the liver by up to 11 percent.

“Crude and relative liver weights are also affected at the end of the maximal (33%) GM maize feeding level as well as that of the heart which for corresponding parameters to a comparable extent, showed up to an 11% weight increase…Additional statistically significant differences include … higher … overall body (3.7%) weight.”

A 2009 study explained different GMO dangers than weight increase.

“There is a world-wide debate concerning the safety and regulatory approval process of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods. In order to scientifically address this issue, it is necessary to have access to toxicological tests, preferably on mammals, performed over the longest time-scales involving detailed blood and organ system analyses.”the introduction states. “For the first time in the world, we’ve proven that GMO are neither sufficiently healthy nor proper to be commercialized…Each time, for all three GMOs, the kidneys and liver, which are the main organs that react to a chemical food poisoning, had problems,” indicated Gilles-Eric Séralini, an expert member of the Commission for Biotechnology Reevaluation.

While contributing to weight gain,  Monsanto's GM corn has also shown to be creating resistant rootworms — causing farmers to use even more threatening pesticides on GMO crops. Also, the use of Monsanto’s Bt biopesticides has been shown to to be aiding in decline of our health, recently being found to wreak havoc on human kidney cells.

GMO crops are known to cause short term damage to nature and human biology, but it is perhaps the long-term consequences that are most concerning. We currently have information and research regarding the detrimental effects of GMO foods in the short term, but they continue to be used while long-term effects are still a mystery even to supporters of GMOs. It is for these reasons, among many others, that GMO crops are continually being banned around the world. Hungary, France, Peru, and others have taken all action against GMO crops and GM foods altogether due to safety hazards these products pose on human health, the ecosystem, and the environment.

Confusing?  It is to me too.  So while some research shows no harmful effects and other research shows the opposite, we still have lots of GMO corn being grown.  Literally tons of it.

What do we do with all this corn?

Corn is grown on more than 400,000 farms in the United States and is used in more than 3,500 applications.  According to the USDA Agricultural Projections to 2018 (February 2009, USDA, Economic Research Service), corn farming and yields are projected to increase, resulting in record corn production.  Corn represents hundreds of millions of dollars in monthly agricultural exports, and plays a significant role in worldwide stock markets, with corn futures and options trading accounting for billions of dollars of daily market activity.

While "corn" may not be listed on the ingredient list, corn is included in food products such as ice cream, baby food and infant formula, pudding, fruit drinks, wine, beer, peanut butter and chewing gum. Corn is also found in margarine, processed meats (such as bologna and bacon), cakes, spaghetti sauce, jams and jellies. Corn even appears in powdered sugar, salad dressings and many breads and pastries. With such pervasive use, it is challenging to find processed foods that do not contain any corn ingredients at all.

Corn and corn byproducts are also used extensively in non-food products such as aspirin, envelopes, toothpaste, starched clothing and stamps. A growing number of "green" products are using corn technology as a biodegradable component of such items as ethanol windshield washer fluid, certain types of road de-icers and ethanol fuel - this is a hot topic and quite controversial due to the large amount of land and water required for its production. Disposable cups, containers (such as to-go boxes) and packaging peanuts can now be made from corn and are fully compostable and biodegradable.

Corn is used in so many products (or used in the production of others, such as livestock) that corn's supply and demand have a deep influence on the price consumers pay for a growing number of products. Eggs, for example, cost more when corn costs more, since corn is fed to the hens that produce the eggs. Likewise, increased ethanol production could result in higher fuel prices when corn prices are high.

So now what?  Is corn bad for us or not?

I think what we should take away from all this information is that we are eating more corn than we are aware of.  And if we are honest, we do not truly know if today's GMO corn is good or bad for us; only time will tell.  What we do know is that we are meant to consume a variety of foods and unknowingly we are consuming lots of corn.  We need to limit our intake of processed foods and instead eat diverse types of whole foods.  Real foods.  Corn is not bad for us.  In fact, it is has been a staple in many diets for thousands of years. 

We know that corn is here to stay.  For that reason I recommend eating unprocessed, locally grown corn.  Also, we should eat corn grown without pesticides as we know that pesticide use has been linked to kidney damage.  My family looks forward to summer when sweet corn in season and we will continue to do so.  I worry about the GMO impact and for that reason I try to grow my own.  For others, GMOs seem safe and they can find research to defend that belief. 

Eat with your conscience and eat real foods.  Your body will thank you!

Sources

A. Hope Jahren and Rebecca A. Kraft. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in fastfood: Signatures of corn and confinement. PNAS Early Online Edition for the week of Nov. 10-14, 2008.

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-09-22/health/kd.gupta.column_1_high-fructose-corn-syrup-corn-refiners-association-soybean-oil?_s=PM:HEALTH

http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/farmbills/
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/I-Cant-Believe-Its-Corn.aspx#ixzz1tw8IgdIL
A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health
http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm