Diving Into the Ingredients That Make Us: Corn – wayfarersoliloquy

The Columbian Exchange. One of the most impactful outcomes of colonialism, mercantilism, and our universal love of things that taste good. With it, Europe gained potatoes, tobacco, and tomatoes. The Americas got sugarcane, cattle, and sadly, a ton of horrible diseases. In North America, particularly in Mexico, one impactful ingredient was and remains a sacred source of nutrients and energy and object of veneration. Of course, I’m talking about corn. 

A Sacred Grain

According to many Mesoamerican human origin stories, corn was a key component to our beginning. From it, we arose. These stories helped secure the grain’s importance to societies. Corn literally sustained life and was venerated for it. 

In Mexico and many parts of Latin America, rituals, knowledge, and a core set of beliefs evolve around the grain. Each society has a strict protocol for when to plant, harvest, store, and prepare the grain. 

Corn evolved from the ancient grass teosinte over 7000 years ago. Because of pre-Hispanic trade within Mesoamerica and into North and South America, it evolved in several isolated regions. As a result, edible corn became incredibly diverse. This diversity also helped it resist pests and diseases.  

The Spreading of the Grain

As corn spread through the Americas, societies began planting it with beans and squash. At the core of this practice is a gardening-symbiosis. Corn acts like a tall structure for the beans to scale. Beans produce nutrients for the soil via the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that thrive in their roots. The leaves of the squash plant provide shade which limits water evaporation and prevents weed growth. 

The knowledge of this highly effective combination would eventually make its way into North America and become known to the Cherokee and Iroquois people as the “three sisters.” To this day, farmers in every corner of the Americas plant these crops together religiously. 

After colonization, Europeans soon brought the three sisters to Europe. Today, the intercropping of corn, beans, and squash is done around the world and is an important tool for fighting world hunger.  

An Overused Commodity 

Corn’s effectiveness at nourishing us hasn’t come without a price. The plant has been modified to handle chemical pesticides, produce more sugars, and grow quicker. With the next step, the Bt corn varieties, which have a gene of bacterial origin implanted in them that kills insects once ingested. 

There are several arguments for and against using these genetically modified super corn mono crops. Proponents of the practice point to the alleviation of world hunger and the ability to produce varieties of crops that are resilient to disease. In response to this are the people who argue that the best way to prevent disease is to keep the genetic variation diverse. They also point out to the ecologically destructive effects of the fertilizers and pesticides that these mono crops rely on. 

The most visible impact of cheap corn has been on our bodies. Highly productive varieties have allowed food scientists to produce high fructose corn syrup and cheap components of animal feed. The result has been an overactive and industrialized food system that relies on the easy sugars produced by corn. There is no questioning this version of corn’s role in childhood obesity, pollution, and other societal ailments. Once our diets became reliant on these cheap corn sugars and the foods that contain them, our collective health declined. 

Protecting its Legacy

The once protected and diverse native varieties have lost favor to the industrialized mono crops we’ve produced. Fortunately, there’s a push to conserve and promote heirloom varieties. Led by indigenous communities in both North, Central, and South America, heirloom seeds are being saved, planted, and studied. 

One of the smaller yet vocal sectors promoting this change are the chefs and foodies around the world who are tired of our boring fast-food palates. Indigenous chefs, in particular, are bringing back the incredible flavors of their cuisine. In Mexico, food experiences like the ones provided by Mimi Lopez are changing people’s opinions about corn and the flavors it can create. 

If you haven’t tried a tortilla made from fresh ground Mexican heirloom corn, you’re missing one of the best experiences on earth. Few flavors can be so fulfilling and heartwarming. Thankfully, the same technology and ingenuity that led us down the industrial corn revolution can help bring these delicious varieties back to life and into our food. Corn is not just an ingredient. It’s a story, a history, and an undeniably important part of our heritage that should be preserved and respected.