Adventures in Corn-Fasting

What do my Parmesan cheese, honey mustard salad dressing and energy bars all have in common? Besides being dangerously delicious, to my surprise they all contain corn! During my little corn-fasting experiment over 2 and half days, I found myself planning meals and then retracting my ideas at the last minute after discovering corn in many of the things I eat. For me, it was a bit of a shock; not only in just the variety of different ways corn shows up in food, but in the variety of foods as well. It’s as though you can’t go for more than a couple of meals without running into something that has at least a little bit of corn in it, if even that much when following a typical American diet.

While it was initially difficult to eat a meal without taking in some corn, I quickly spotted a trend; it seemed as though the more processed the food was, the more likely it was to contain corn. My Parmesan cheese and honey mustard dressing contained corn products because (in my belief) they are meant to have long shelf lives and they also take a step or two out of the food preparation process. In the case of the honey mustard dressing for example, I took a quick look in my recipe book and found instructions for making a similar dressing; the only ingredients called for were olive oil, honey, mustard, lemon juice and garlic, a far cry from the paragraph list of ingredients found on my store bought variety’s label. In fact it looked so easy to make, I began asking myself why I had bought the pre-made dressing in the first place.

Essentially over the few days of corn-fasting, I came to the conclusion that corn is there to make our lives more convenient. Don’t have the time to grate fresh Parmesan cheese? Buy some pre-grated cheese with a little corn in it! Don’t have the will to make your own fresh salad dressing? Buy some pre-made stuff that comes with a bit of corn! The little experience made me question some of my eating and food purchasing habits. Flipping through my recipe book and making dinner on Saturday night reminded me of just how easy and enjoyable it is to make meals from scratch. And when we make these meals from scratch, I think the lack of corn and corn-derived products make them healthier as well. After all, less corn in food means a less processed product, which I believe is the real sign of whether something edible is healthy or not.