Last Thursday Good Morning America featured a spot on corn with the makers of the King Corn documentary. Two recent Yale graduates decided to return to Iowa where their grandfathers had farmed to grow an acre of corn and follow it into the food system. What they found out alarmed them, because, as was demonstrated on TV, corn in one form or another is now in just about everything we eat.
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The problem is determining what has caused these epidemic increases in obesity and diabetes. There is not only a lot of money involved but our country’s life-style and almost the entire food supply. We are a fast food nation with over half of all meals prepared outside the home.
Michael Pollan, a New York and L.A. Times investigative journalist and Berkeley journalism professor, suggested that corn might be a big player in his 2006 best-selling book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
“The great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn,” he wrote.
“Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and zanthan gum, read: corn.”
I have been following this media debate closely for several reasons. I have a history of blood sugar irregularities and have struggled with an extra 20 pounds since puberty. My younger sister is now prediabetic with high blood pressure and very overweight. I am not an expert so must rely on the conclusions of writers and organizations I trust.
In 2006, Rodale Press, the Prevention Magazine folks (who were right about organic agriculture), published a book called “The Sugar Solution.” Page 6 reads, “And there’s growing evidence that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), now the most ubiquitous sweetener in the American food supply, is directly linked to the national’s twin epidemics of overweight and diabetes. HFCS’s role? This sweetener seems to bypass the body’s “I feel full” mechanisms. In a study of 93,000 women, Harvard School of Public Health researchers recently linked a 10 pound weight gain and 83% high diabetes risk directly to the consumption of HFCS.”
When I brought this to the attention of readers of this column reprinted in the Douglas Dispatch, I heard from the Corn Refiners Association in Washington, D.C. “Dear Ms. McCaffrey, they wrote, “We read your May 12 article in the Daily Dispatch with interest, particularly your description of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as “unhealthy.” We would like to provide you with factual information on this safe, natural nutritive sweetener.”
Later studies including one by the Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy at the University of Maryland in 2007 reached the opposite conclusion. “Based on the currently available evidence the expert panel concluded that HFCS does not appear to contribute to overweight and diabetes any differently than do other energy sources.” However at the end of this paper under acknowledgements I read that this expert panel was supported by an unrestricted grant from Tate and Lye, Inc. a large corn refiner and quite a few members of the panel were consultants with or had received grants from multiple food and beverage companies.
In August 2007 researchers at Rutgers University found that soft drinks sweetened with HFCS may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children. In a laboratory study of commonly consumed carbonated beverages, the scientists found that drinks containing the syrup had high levels of reactive compounds called carbonyls that could trigger cell and tissue damage leading to diabetes. These reactive carbonyls are also elevated in the blood of individuals with diabetes and linked to the complications of the disease. Based on the study data, Chi-Tang Ho, PhD, professor of food chemistry, estimates that a single can of soda contains about five times the concentration of reactive carbonyls found in the blood of an adult person with diabetes.
However as brought out in King Corn, the problem is more serious than just HFCS. Due to the abundance of cheap government subsidized corn, since the 1950’s almost all the meat and dairy products in the country come from animals raised on a corn diet, even ruminants that evolved eating grasses.
This Week at the Sierra Vista Farmers Market
For Easter try a leg of lamb or a small ham from Nathan Watkins who raises grass-fed lamb and natural pork on the San Ysidro Farm in McNeal. Rancher Dennis Moroney of the 47 Ranch suggests trying goat meat which has a milder flavor than lamb. Dennis also has new batches of two kinds of jerky made from cows that spend all their lives on the range. The kind made by the UA meat lab in Tucson is easier on dental work and less peppery than the crunchy strip variety made from beef round. Dennis says each member of his round-up crew, ranging in age from twelve to sixty plus, was issued a pack of the UA jerky on Saturday to sustain them during a major move of cattle to new pastures. He reports that the entire crew endorsed this new “genuine cowboy flavor” jerky.
The Simmons Honey family from Douglas will be back at the market with lots of beeswax candles. To grace the Easter table there’s a detailed carved egg candle, a Celtic cross, praying hands, spiral tapers or angels. A healthy addition to Easter baskets are honey sticks (honey in a straw) which come in plain honey as well as 18 natural flavors. Creamed (whipped) honey is popular mixed with strawberries or blueberries to make an ambrosia spread. Sweet and savory honey mustard, with mesquite and desert wildflower honeys, is good on holiday ham or any other baked white meat. Ray Simmons reports, “Our favorite way to serve honey mustard is to use it as a dip with fresh, hot homemade bread sticks.” Home-style pickles, relishes and spreads (no high fructose corn syrup.) Please call 364-2745 to reserve honey by the gallon.
Fiore di Capra Dairy & Creamery will offer a new fruity goat cheese spread great for Easter breakfast. It will also have wine-soaked cheese that makes a great appetizer. Raw goat’s milk is now available but needs to be preordered. Call 520.586-2081 or e-mail altrece@hughes.net to order.
Greens: Backyard grower Elly Stavarek will have lettuce (red leaf, green leaf and butter crunch) as well as Swiss chard, red & gold stem, and some bok choy. Get to the market early for just-picked spinach from Carol and Corky Berty of Hereford who will have Garden of Eat’n farm eggs and potted garlic chives to get going in your garden. Great for garnishing soups, salads and omelet’s with a mild garlic flavor.
Stewart Loew of Agua Linda Farm will bring his Spring lettuce mix as well as arugala and Asian greens bok choy, tat soy and mizuna. Stewart will also have organic dates and date fudge as well as Jack and the Bean Soup mix (either red lentil or yellow split pea) produced in Tucson and white tepary beans grown by San Xavier Coop Farm on the San Xavier Indian Reservation. The farm is committed to healthy farming practices and growing traditional crops of the Tohono O’odham People.
Brown tepary and other heirloom dried beans from Native Seeds/SEARCH will be available from Katherine Zellerbach as well as Just Coffee (that supports coffee growing families in Mexico), prickly pear nectar, chia, mole spice mixes and agave nectar.
Paul Smith now has a tapenade made by Dr. Hummus in Phoenix from feta cheese and black olives. Dr. Hummus is Saber Rouin, originally from Tunisia, now living in Phoenix. His story was told last week in the Arizona Republic’s food section. His hummus line includes roasted garlic, roasted red pepper, jalapeno and cilantro, and artichoke, a tabouleh salad and a roasted eggplant dip. For dippers try his plain, garlic or rosemary pita chips. Saber uses all local ingredients and said, “I want this to be a real Arizona product. Local makes it the freshest it can be.”
Helen Hayes will have information on spring and summer problems such as Valley Fever and the Colorado River Toad, the local pest that can hurt your pets prevalent during monsoonal heavy rains. She says, “Azmira (the Tucson holistic pet company) has supplements to help you through these times of virulent weather and critters, i.e. snakes, hyper pets and allergies.”
In the Garden Nursery has sweet basil and lemon grass, the stem and leaf used widely in Thai cuisine with a distinct lemon flavor. Culinary herbs also include rosemary, epazote, curry, peppermint, spearmint, sweet marjoram, sorrel, and pineapple sage. Medicinal herbs will include feverfew, valerian, rue, yerba manzo, and agave. Bedding plants will be spinach, cilantro, butter lettuce and tomatilos, Tom Thumb peas, tomatoes (yellow pear, Marmande (European with lots of flavor) and Campbell’s (this is the tomato Campbell’s soup started their business with) and jalapenos.
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