I realize I’m dipping into a vat of stickyness here, not unlike the production method of the most popular sweetener on the market today - high fructose corn syrup. This is a “sticky” issue because on its surface, it’s hard to see the problem with growing corn in this country. What could be more all-American than a midwestern corn farmer? “The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye,” sings male lead character Curly in the very American musical, Oklahoma.

Without getting too mired in the details, corn has become a big problem in this country. Now, I’m not talking about sweet corn -- the delicious ears that we husk and greedily eat, slightly steamed or barbequed, during the hottest summer months. This is probably the type of corn that Curly was singing about, since this was just about the only kind of corn grown around the time the musical was written (a bit of trivia: Oklahoma is commonly agreed to as the first musical play -- written by Rogers and Hammerstein in the early 1940s). Unfortunately, this isn’t the type of corn grown in most farms in this country today. If you took a bite off an Oklahoma-grown ear of corn today, most likely it would be an industrial grade of corn, and tasting a bit like cardboard. It needs a significant amount of processing before it approaches being edible. And if the corn isn’t going toward creating additives like high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, citric acid, dextrose, maltodextrin and more, it goes toward feeding nearly all the animals we eat, including cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens -- even fish. In fact, there is so much corn produced in this country, it is nearly impossible to go a day -- or even a meal -- without eating food that is derived from it, or were fed almost exclusively on it.

And this doesn’t even take into account the petrochemical fertilizers, government subsidies, powerful herbicides, genetically modified seeds, and financial instability of the farmers who grow industrial-grade corn. Sadly, most farmers today cannot even feed their own families with the crops they grow -- a form of “life insurance” that Americans have relied upon since at least WWI. It costs more to produce an acre of corn than it is worth on the market today, making farmers essentially government employees, living off subsidies as their wages.

And who benefits from all of these piles and piles of corn we produce each year? Primarily, food manufacturers, including (especially) fast food corporations. None of them need these corn-based products to make their food -- when was the last time you used maltodextrin in your home kitchen? They use them because they are 1) cheap, and 2) they increase the shelf life of products.

But corn is not cheap. Farmers pay the price. Taxpayers pay the price. We pay the price, in terms of our health -- corn grown today has so much starch in it, it has nearly no resemblance to the protein-packed kernels the Aztecs grew thousands of years ago. Is it any wonder that diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity plague any civilization who embraces the “western” diet, which is mostly corn?

“All the same when it comes to your health?” If only it were just that simple.