Corn: The Mainstay of the North American Diet

            Native Americans, as the first people to inhabit the Northern American continent, have influenced the lives of all twenty-first century Americans in innumerable ways, but no tradition has remained so prevalent in our society as the farming of corn. While this crop was invaluable to Native Americans, our contemporary culture has fetishized corn and exploited it to excess. With the destruction of Native American values, especially those rooted in animism and a correlating sense of respect for the environment, modern American practices regarding the cultivation and consumption of corn have proved detrimental to the health of our people and our land.

Almost every decision a person makes today, ranging from political beliefs to personal health, can now be linked back to the advent of corn – whether or not this fact has a predominantly positive or negative affect on American citizens is debatable, but it is undeniable that corn has played an integral part in the creation of the United States as we know it today.

            While the major corporations of the twenty-first century are not as resourceful with the entire plant as America’s aboriginals, they’ve discovered infinitely more uses for the corn itself. In fact, it’s been reported that “of the 45,000-odd items in American supermarkets, more than one quarter contain corn”; these products include “disposable diapers, trash bags, toothpaste, charcoal briquettes, matches, batteries, and even the shine on the covers of magazines.” It may be surprising to read the tags on some such items and discover they contain traces of corn, but it’s even more disconcerting to discover that certain food items are more corn than they are what they claim to be.

As Michael Pollan, a journalist who has extensively researched modern industrial food practices, stated, “If you are what you eat, and especially if you eat industrial food, as 99 percent of Americans do, what you are is ‘corn’.” Though America (as the nation that was born only a few hundred years ago) lacks much of a culinary identity beyond the simple, mostly packaged products eaten at annual celebrations of its Fourth of July founding, the cornstalk has become somewhat of a symbol of the country’s food heritage. Americans tend to think we eat a diverse range of internationally inspired meals, but our dishes aren’t much different than what we force-feed our livestock. As journalist Tim Flannery claimed, “all meat is also ultimately corn.” Animals that would be “far healthier and happier eating grass” such as chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows and even salmon now consume kernels daily. The Native Americans who pioneered the use of corn probably wouldn’t immediately recognize the variety that we eat today. Farmers originally grew strains of maize that produced tough, multi-colored kernels, which have been replaced by homogenous, yellow products that seem to come more from a lab than a field.

            The innovations made to corn plants and the way it is farmed has had a large influence on American politics and it’s no wonder the issue has been brought right to our doorstep – as “the biggest legal cash crop” in the United States, corns blankets “eighty million acres – an area twice the size of New York State… like a second great American lawn.” Based on ever-increasing population growth, this isn’t hard to believe. The small-scale farming that fed Native American tribes could not support the vast number of people living on the North American continent today, nor would it allow our country to export such a large quantity of this high-demand commodity; however, this doesn’t mean we should abandon all traditional farming techniques.

Pesticides and machines maintain the cornfields that cover the United States today; the plants themselves grow from seeds that were modified in laboratories to be sweeter and more durable. Beyond the consequences of spraying harmful chemicals on our food and allowing dangerous run-off into the water of local ecosystems, our nation’s hunger for corn has also had serious repercussions for the health of our country’s soil. However, concern for the environment has been prioritized below a focus on our economy by the federal government. Billions of dollars are paidto growers of commodity crops, such as corn, each year as a part of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act (commonly referred to as the “farm bill”), which was part of a federal support campaign for agriculture that began during the Great Depression. These subsidies lower the price of products made with corn, subsequently making a diet high in starches more affordable for low-income households. Though debates about American obesity are prominently heard in the public discourse, it’s imperative that we link the issue back to its source: corn.

            North America has had a long history with corn and it won’t be ending any time soon.