Corn Essay

In this chapter, I explain the reasons of how the policies of the US government have developed food cravings, food addictions, and obesity. This chapter covers the most important foods, how they became adulterated, and how chemicals have become intertwined with your food source.

Corn

Christopher Columbus’s men first discovered maize, otherwise known as corn, around 1492. The word “corn” has different meanings in different countries. Corn was a generic term for wheat, oats, and barley, and in early America, maize. During the 400 years that the Americas were being developed, corn was the principal grain that was grown on cleared lands. National average corn yields remained relatively stable in the 1800s and early 1900s. Not until the 1940s did the yield significantly grow. Higher yields were attainable because of advancements with fertilizers, machinery, pesticides, and genetic modifications of corn DNA.

In the last one hundred years, corn has been incorporated into many aspects of industrialized America. Two different types of plants process corn: the wet millers and the dry millers. Milling

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is the process of using special rotary cutters to remove material from a grain that is fed into a machine. In other words, milling removes the husk, fiber, and all the other nutritious elements from grains. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, wet millers process corn into high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), glucose and dextrose, starch, corn oil, beverage alcohol, industrial alcohol, and ethanol fuel. Dry millers process corn into flakes for cereal, corn flour, corn grits, corn meal, and brewers grits for beer production.1

Ethanol production, either by dry or the wet method, creates by-products, which then are used exte...

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...e introduction of hard wheat and new milling techniques that changed the quality of flour stimulated the demand for bread. Hard wheat has a higher protein content, which makes it better suited than soft wheat for making bread. The essential ingredients for leavened bread are flour, water, and yeast. These ingredients are mixed together, allowing the yeast to break the flour into starches that then break down further into simple sugars. Yeast eats up these simple sugars and releases carbon dioxide. Through kneading, some proteins in wheat flour form a sticky substance called gluten. If the dough has a strong gluten network, the gluten catches the released carbon dioxide bubbles, thereby inflating the dough. This dough rising creates the bread’s texture. If the protein level of the dough can’t be trapped, then the dough can’t rise enough to create the desired texture.