The major grains, especially corn, rice, and wheat are very good at producing lots and lots of calories. For most of human history that’s been a very good thing because there often wasn’t enough food to feed everyone who was hungry. But even though there are still 800 million people around the world who aren’t getting enough to eat, in the US we’re more concerned about getting too many calories and getting fat instead of not enough and starving. So things like corn, potatoes, rice, bread and pasta (the last two made from wheat) became “empty calories” because they give us lots energy that turns into fat if we don’t use it, and people became more interested in foods like spinach and tomatoes that don’t produce nearly as much food per acre or have as many calories, but have more vitamins and minerals.

Add in the facts that corn is important in feeding animals at a time when more and more people are becoming vegetarians (often the same people who are interested in organic food) and that corn was the first crop to be genetically engineered (because it was and still is the biggest source of food in America) and it was easy for it to become a symbol to some people of what they don’t like about the way we produce food today.

Corn is perfectly safe to eat. I never buy organic unless I can’t find the normal kind of food I’m looking for. Just make sure you also eat fruits and vegetables to get all the vitamins you need. And it’s completely ok if the fruits and vegetables are not organic, just be sure to wash anything you don’t peal before you eat (like apples and tomatoes). Even if they are organic it’s just as important to wash them because all sorts of things can get on fresh food before you buy it, and remember that organic farms use products based on animal manure to fertilize their plants.

Be sure to ask if there’s anything else I can help out with.

Between this episode and some other stuff I’ve heard about corn, I started wondering what all the concern is about corn lately. I thought the information on CSI seemed a bit off even before reading your article, but thanks for explaining it so well. Can you now help shine some light on why the corn industry has been getting such a bad reputation lately? I never imagined that eating plain corn on the cob could be bad for me. Am I being too naive, thinking there’s nothing wrong with all the fruits and veggies out there, while others will only eat organic (organic is way too overpriced for me)? Or are others being too paranoid?

Thanks.

(I tried to explain HOW it was pseudo-science and hand-waving in the above post, but I can’t explain why something is scientifically wrong without science itself.)

That said, there are plenty of things to be worried about in our nation’s food supply. But this show got people upset about the wrong things. I don’t think lying to people is the right way to get them more interested in where their food comes from.

That’s my position in six sentences. Please let me know if I can do anything more to address your questions or if I simplified too much. The point of this blog is to reach out to people not actively involved in doing research, but I’m still feeling my way into the role.

I saw FOOD, Inc. and though I am not able to follow the science I get the point: agribusiness is messing with our food supply and we do not know the long-term effects.

CSI Miami drew our attention to this fact; so it was true in that sense (and some of it may have been factual). The point was not to teach us biology but to draw our attention to what is going on with Monsanto, ADM and all the rest.

I appreciate your posting, however. But if you could rephrase it for us pop culture folk who have high school science back grounds, I, for one, would appreciate it.

Thanks!

The financial incentives to produce a transgenic sweet corn are so low – less than 1% of all corn planted is sweet corn. You could perhaps get an return on investment for great farmer incentive trait like Bt (I think Bt sweet corn was developed but never went to market), but only because a lot of the regulatory legwork was already done. The likelihood of getting a ROI for a weak consumer incentive trait like “we made this perfectly digestible corn slightly more digestible” is zero.

I wonder what most people make of this. I suppose it speaks to how little people know about where their food comes from.