By Shawn Dell Joyce

We have become the true “corn people,” more so than the Aztecs or the Incas. If you were to examine a typical American skeleton under an electron microscope, you would find corn isotopes throughout our bones. We have more corn isotopes than any other culture, past, present and perhaps future.

Americans eat about one ton of corn per person, per year. This is not the delicious sweet corn our local farms grow. This is commodity corn appetizingly called “number two” corn, and is the main crop grown in our country. We primarily eat corn in the form of animal products. Cows; ruminants that naturally eat grasses, are being unnaturally fed corn. Salmon would never eat corn in the wild, but are fed corn on salmon farms. Chickens and pigs were naturally designed for varied diets but instead are fed mainly corn. Corn is one of the main ingredients in over 4,000 products found in our homes, even toothpaste. Some processed foods like Twinkies, contain over thirty-six forms of corn.

The corn that wasn’t fed to animals went to make corn sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, lactic acid, sorbitol, corn syrup, enzymes, starches, and thickeners. Thanks to the versatility of corn, our consumption of processed sweeteners has risen twenty-five pounds per person, since we began mass-producing the stuff in the early 1970’s according to the U.S.D.A. In spite of the surgeon general’s warning of an “epidemic of obesity,” we are still finding new and more fattening ways to consume corn.

 Corn is also one of the most environmentally devastating crops to grow. Corn guzzles fossil fuels in the form of fertilizer, insecticides, and heavy processing machinery. Each calorie of corn produced requires a calorie of fossil fuels to grow using standard farming practices.  When that corn is converted corn syrup, it requires ten calories of fossil fuels to create one calorie of syrup. When corn is converted to ethanol, we get about 4 calories of fuel energy for every three of calories of corn according to the U.S.D.A.

Is there any way out of this maize madness? Eating is a political act. Every dollar you spend on food is casting your vote, we literally are what we eat. When you pass up processed foods with all of its hidden corn, and buy fresh, locally-grown foods, you are helping to encourage more sustainable agriculture. Visit Wallkill Valley’s winter farmstands and buy your meat from local producers.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, and an author of “Orange County Bounty” local foods cookbook available through www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

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