The True Corn People

Did you know that the average US resident consumes more corn than the "Corn People" of Mexico and South America, every day?

There are almost no items in a US supermarket today that do not contain corn in any form - processed, perfected, enchanted, et cetera - and scientists have ways to tell what a person's diet are made up of. By investigating dead skin cells (hair, nails) of US residents, they find that a significant percentage of the nutrition comes from corn - even through the meat they consume, where most of the cattle have been fed with corn, and the sweets, where corn syrup and the likes have provided the sweetening. I guess it's safe to say that you pretty much are what you eat, and most US Americans are corn cobs with fat legs.

In Mexico and a large part of South America, where people identify themselves as the Corn People, and eat corn in a non-processed, natural form just about every day, the same studies of dead skin cells have been conducted - and these people are less like their food than the US Americans are. Their cattle are mostly fed on grass. Their peripheral foodstuffs don't contain much processed corn. They, who've lived off the corn for hundreds, or thousands of years, are more varied and diverse in their diets than the US Americans who exploit them. So who are the real corn people, really? Those who revel in it and embrace it... or those who unknowingly resemble it?

Author Michael Pollan wrote a book in which at least 30% of the pages are dedicated to how cool corn is. It's called The Omnivore's Dilemma and I recommend it to all people who like to be both horrified and fascinated at the same time. Corn is Cool!