Corn syrup

When I was a child, we lived for a while in a white farmhouse in upstate New York. The farmer grew corn, and my brothers and sisters and I had the naughty habit of taking smooth stones and making paved forts in the furrows. When you stood up, you were still invisible because the corn was so high. Out in the midwest, where the cornfields are so vast they look like the ocean, children sometimes get lost in them, like Hansel and Gretel in the primeval forest.

The corn (= maize; the English word "corn" originally meant wheat, and is still used that way outside the U.S.) is subsidized by the U.S. government. The result is that more than twice as much corn is grown in the U.S. as any other crop. What to do with the mountain of corn?

It goes into almost every ingestible item you see advertised. Soft drinks, raisin bran, hamburger sauce, candy, peanut butter, ketchup, cough syrup, crackers, yogurt, margarita mix, ice cream, jelly, salad dressing, bread, lemonade, pizza, soup....

I don't eat many of those things. After so many years in France where the food is still so much better (more natural), I feel as if I can taste the artificial ingredients in so many foods here. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Recently my college classmates have been talking on our listserv about high fructose corn syrup. One of them went to Mexico and was surprised how much better the Coke tasted there. He was curious and investigated further. He discovered that in Mexico, Coke is made with sugar, while in the U.S., it is made with corn syrup, which is heavily promoted by American corn farmers as a way of using up their enormous surpluses; corn syrup is cheaper than sugar in the U.S. because of high tariffs for sugar.

Once you start looking, you find it in almost every product in the supermarket. It makes you see cornfields differently.

Comments

[MMH]

Have you read "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan? It's a great book that goes into more detail about the fact that in America, we have no idea where most of our food comes from.

[Laure]

I can only commiserate: every trip to the grocery store--organic or not--turns into a corn syrup hunt. It's so ubiquitous, even in basics such as milk, bread, or "100% natural" fruit juices. I guess that's what happens when lobbies prevail over public health. It isn't without serious costs and consequences, but the regulatory bodies do not seem enclined to put two and two together.

[chrissoup]

I combined my quest for good food with politics, and decided to eat nothing containing HFCS. It keeps me away from the chips and other junk (even Safeway plain kidney beans have it though--why???). Trader Joe's products have very few items with the stuff, so I shop there, at farmer's markets, and in the produce section.