...and the dominance of Corn

The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
By Michael Pollan
Published in 2006 by Penguin Press
New York, New York

Today’s Assigned Reading: Industrial: Corn (Chapters 1 to 7, p15-119).

In this section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan focuses upon how corn is the primary source of calories in the American diet, albeit unbeknownst to most consumers. In this section he also explains what government policies and social pressures have resulted in corn being the most prevalent crop grown across the entire United States. In his narration, Pollan talks about how corn is grown, and where it goes after its harvested – surprisingly, its not straightforward as to how corn gets from the field to inside your stomach (p63). Specifically, the majority of corn consumed does not come from the obvious products of corn: corn starch, corn meal, or corn-on-the-cob.

Nope, most of the corn eaten is not in any form recognizable that it is in fact “corn”. That is to say, Pollan explains how the majority of corn goes to feed cows, which in turn transform kernels into meat, which we then eat (p65). What’s left of the rest of the corn harvest then goes to produce *other* compounds – high fructose corn syrup, ethanol and other alcohols, starch, plastics, and emulsifiers – which we then eat in our sodas, alcoholic beverages, fast food, and pre-packaged processed foods (p85).

Because of these unbelievable levels of consumption, Pollan states that Americans are “processed corn, walking” (p23). However I wonder – are they (we) really? I don’t think so – or at least not so in my case. For example, before writing this blog, I had a lettuce and avocado salad with apple cider vinegar, a blueberry muffin (made with butter, eggs, milk and wheat flour), and an orange. Well, unless the organic cow that produced my butter and milk or the chicken that laid my omega-3 egg were fed corn, today I’ve not eaten anything containing or made from corn. In fact, I am allergic to corn, and can barely eat a few pieces of popcorn or even a small slice of cornbread before beginning to swell up! So I think I’d know if I were eating such an unbelievable amount of corn that Pollan states Americans do (p64).

This raises a question - how did he calculate this annual amount? Was it by percentage of C13 found in our food or our bodies, or by what percent of our food’s ingredients came from corn? Or did he take the overall yield of corn for one year, divide it by the number of citizens in the USA, and say that’s how much corn they each ate? Because I have issues with all of these methods of calculations.

Firstly – the percentage of C13 in an object is, in my opinion, an invalid measure of the percent of corn within it. This is due to a basic botany fact – corn is NOT the only plant that preferentially acquires C13! That is to say, sorghum, millet and most members of the sunflower family (as well as hundreds of other species) preferentially acquire C13, too (Wikipedia article: C4 carbon fixation)! Therefore we cannot completely base our “amount of corn eaten” on the percent of C13 found in our food or bodies – because other foods NOT EVEN REMOTELY ASSOCIATED WITH CORN can contribute to this “C13 corn percentage”.

Secondly – determining the amount of corn eaten based on the amount of food ingredients that are sourced from corn is a questionable method at best. That is to say, is it valid to consider these compounds to still be “corn”, even after they have been highly processed, digested and meddled with? In Biology, we are taught that what define an organism is its DNA, genes, and the proteins it makes. Therefore if the DNA sequences, genes or protein that identify “corn” as “corn” are no longer present in these various compounds – having been separated into many tiny pieces along the way - can they still be considered “corn”?

Thirdly – by taking the average yearly harvest of corn and dividing it amongst every US citizen and saying that’s how much they each consumed is downright wrong! There are a number of reasons for which I disagree with this. Firstly, Pollan himself points out that the vast majority of the corn goes to feed cattle. Well, cattle are very inefficient at converting food into meat – therefore we can factor out a great number of calories right there (p80). Next, the processing methods applied to corn to make any number of compounds is surely not 100% efficient. For example, of every 100 corn calories going into the processing plant, likely 10 calories or less will come out and be consumed. Thirdly, a great amount of corn does not even end up in food (p85)! Who knows how much of the 10 billion bushel corn harvest goes into ethanol production (p85)! And finally, how much of this corn is abandoned or spilt, like the surplus pile observed next to the grain elevator in Farnhamville, Iowa (p58)?

Therefore while proportionally each US citizen may “consume” X-number of pounds of corn over one year, they do not do so directly by sitting down and eating those X lbs of corn over the entire year – the vast majority of these calories are processed first, whether by an animal or a factory, and either then have no guarantee of even ending up in a human’s stomach – perhaps they end up fuelling cars, or maybe are abandoned and left for rodents to enjoy.

But even with my objections to the method of calculating how much corn is eaten per American per year, that’s not to say I particularity disagree with Pollan’soverall point that Americans eat way too much corn. That much is, to me, quite obvious in his final chapter entitled The Meal: Fast Food and by how many litres of soda I’ve seen people around me consuming on a daily basis.