The Sweet Revenge of Corn/The Grass is Always Sweeter

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more versatile grain than corn, the jack-of-all-trades when it comes to grasses. In addition to its seemingly infinite number of uses in a culinary setting, it can be used to make alcohol and fuel, as well as clothing and powders. Its use in plastics gives us pillows and mattresses, trash bags, and even batteries. Corn feeds our cattle and our hungry movie-goers, and allows alien spacecraft a place to land. It's such a versatile crop it seems no surprise that one of the more profitable forms of corn is as a sweetener. It's in this form - high fructose corn syrup as it's more commonly known - that controversy begins to accompany profitability. Since widespread use of corn syrup in processed foods as an alternative to cane sugar first emerged in 1975, incidents of type 2 diabetes and obesity have rapidly - and alarmingly - increased, despite inconclusive findings by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. How did something that features such culinary and industrial diversity become such a scapegoat for America's increasing health problems?

Initially corn was a carefully cultivated food staple for the indigenous peoples of the Americas (more appropriately in Mesoamerica, which featured the Aztecs, Mayans, and the Olmec civilizations), originating from a wild grass known as Teosinte. Through generations of developing and refining farming techniques, a small series of kernels became a tighter cluster that more closely resembles the husked ears of "mahiz" that would eventually be introduced as maize to European settlers arriving in the New World. It was this mastery of wild grass that allowed nomadic tribes to form complex and advanced cultures that rivaled those of Roman and Macedonian empires. Agriculture, religion, mathematics, astronomy, and development of a calendar were just a handful of developments made during the reign of maize-cultivating peoples.

The arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s brought disease, slavery, and subjugation, and as the culturally-rich empires of Central and South America fell, so did their knowledge and heritage. Columbus had already brought maize to the Old World and introduced a new grain into the already nutritionally-sparse diets of European countries, one that quickly proved to be higher yielding than the more traditional wheat, barley, and rye crops. Maize became known to Europeans as corn, thanks to the generic term for edible grasses, and the cheap nature of the crop ensured that it would be available to the lower classes. However, with the introduction of corn came the disease pellagra, and the resulting deaths seemed to tell of a dying culture's final revenge from the far side of the globe.

The Spanish, despite their efforts to rob the Mesoamerican peoples of their riches, had never thought to ask if maize came with any special instructions. Lost in the pillaging and destruction was the very necessary step of soaking the kernels overnight in a solution of water and lime, which allows the release of niacin and the amino acid tryptophan. Without unlocking the nutrients within, Europeans were setting themselves up for pellagra, a disease that begins with niacin-deficiency and results in dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and ultimately death if left untreated.

But that was the Old World. Since then, pellagra is virtually unheard of, and corn has become a major player in the world's grains. The discovery in 1957 that corn starch could be processed into a corn syrup that is primarily glucose, and then treated with enzymes that convert much of the glucose to fructose, introduced the idea that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) could be used as a cheaper alternative to cane sugar for sweetening and preserving processed food products. HFCS provided a way around the expensive tariffs placed on importing sugar during the late 1970's, and thanks to government subsidies, corn prices were(and still are) kept relatively low. Prior to 1975 unsold corn would be shipped to African countries for food relief efforts; HFCS made those unsold bushels a loss of potential profits, and humanitarian efforts have since gone the way of the Aztecs and Maya. In fact, profit potential was so great that many U.S. farmers began growing corn specifically for use as manufactured sweetener, not as a staple food grain. Little wonder, then, that processed food companies rushed to utilize HFCS in their products. Both readily available and cheap to produce, it eliminates the need to use more traditional cane sugar or honey to sweeten products. As the Corn Refiners Association has stated with medical backing, HFCS, or corn sugar as the major growers prefer to call it, is equivalent chemically to conventional natural sugars, and does not differ nutritionally. Then why the fuss about rising health concerns?

Expert medical evidence is nothing more than the scientific equivalent of a blurb on the back of a book cover. "So-and-so is one of the hottest authors on the market today." "I couldn't put this book down." "Has all the thrill of a major motion picture." "It's a non-stop roller coaster of literary intensity… a whirlwind of adventure." Pick up any fiction book at your local grocery or mega-mart (heck, even nonfiction), and you're likely to find similar quotations made by big name authors plastered all over the dust jacket. It isn't any different in the world of medicine. Money and free samples dictate who says what or what they even prescribe. Your family physician probably uses a stethoscope provided by one pharmaceutical company, branded with their latest product to hit the market, and click-style pen that features the logo of another. "Let's listen to your lungs, using my Levitra stethoscope. Good, now just a few moments while I record the results on this Prilosec OTC pad of paper with my Plavix pen." The FDA is correct in saying the nutritional numbers match up really well when you compare high fructose corn syrup to honey and cane sugar. At hand, though, is the comparison of apples to oranges; or, more appropriately, glucose to fructose.

Table sugar and HFCS both feature near equal amounts of fructose and glucose, with corn's byproduct getting a slight advantage of 55/45 over can sugar's 50/50 ratio. Recent studies from the Journal of Clinical Investigation have shown it's the fructose that makes a world of difference. Glucose, when entering the stomach to eventually make its way into the bloodstream, triggers a decrease in secretion of the hormone known as ghrelin. This hormone, released prior to eating and eventually tapering off once we're fed, tells the brain to find food because the stomach is hungry. The introduction of fructose, however, does not trigger a change in the production of ghrelin. Ever wonder why you can continuously eat Little Debbie snacks and not feel full, only to suddenly have an upset stomach? Ghrelin never ceased to be produced, so your brain thought you required to continue eating. This, combined with the fact that fructose adds fat to the belly (whereas glucose hides it subcutaneous, or under the skin), spells certain doom for anyone taking in fructose that hopes to lose weight.

American society not only embraces the nature of processed foods, which require little more than tearing a package open and eating, but also the cost. One of the reasons that healthier foods are so hard to introduce to people is the time and cost involved in using raw, natural ingredients. It's much easier - and cheaper - to open a package of Hamburger Helper and add water than it is to make homemade pasta and toss in fresh cut herbs and spices. Think of it in terms of Chinese-made goods. For years Americans have been citing the cheap, tainted goods that China creates and then exports to the United States as being a major concern, and yet American consumers continue to purchase those goods without hesitation. Cost seems to outweigh quality in our culture. In a country that continues to build Walmarts and Dollar Generals, can quality really be a deciding factor when it comes to merchandise or food products?

It's the low cost appeal of corn syrup that will ensure its popularity as a sweetener and preservative. PepsiCo, for example, has already proven that it can make money on this concept by staying true to its corn syrup-based recipe for soft drinks, while introducing limited edition concepts such as Pepsi Throwback, which uses "real sugar!" as an ingredient and boasts 2 grams of sugar less than the more traditional corn syrup-based product. Throwback still offers a whopping 67 grams of sugar per 20 ounce bottle! With soda machines so readily available to schools across the country, and fast food companies happily filling cups with carbonated syrup goodness, it's no wonder that U.S. children are counted as the most obese across the globe. At a cost of roughly 15 cents per 32 ounces of soda served, companies such as McDonald's are turning a profit making American kids overweight. With profit being made, and parents not voicing any concern over the matter of obesity, it's no surprise, then, that products containing HFCS (or even large amounts of cane sugar) continue to saturate the market.

The price to pay for European pillaging of Mesoamerica was pellagra, and now, it would seem, U.S. treatment of Native Americans once upon a time is now resulting in corn's sweet revenge; not in the form of disease attributed to niacin-deficiency, but disease attributed to proper nutrition education-deficiency. With the recent debate over health care, one would think Americans would take a long look at what we're putting in our bodies, rather pointing fingers and blame. Large corporations can only produce and market products loaded with high fructose corn syrup; they can't force consumers to purchase use them. Until Americans become more nutrition-conscious when it comes to food choices, we as a culture will continue to face long term health issues and rising obesity, something we can no longer afford to do.