Say you were to stroll through a quintessentially American landscape one summer morning, looking across vast fields of shimmering, swaying cornstalks a dozen feet tall.
Might you be tempted to sneak down into a row and swipe an ear so that you could sink your teeth into my sweet, juicy kernels right then and there?
If so, I’d almost certainly disappoint you. The bitter truth is that less than 1 percent of what’s grown in America is sweet corn. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, biting into me fresh from the field would be like biting into a raw potato. Welcome to my world—our world—dominated by tough, inedible field corn.
And I do mean my world. Even with minimal contribution from the buttery kernels that you savor come summertime, I am by far the nation’s biggest crop. Chemists have learned how to turn the starch, fiber, oils, and proteins in field corn into industrial products ranging from ethanol and plastic to high-fructose corn syrup. I am used in engine fuel, farm animal food, shampoo, antibiotics, shoe polish, wallpaper, and aspirin. My field version has thrived as actual food, too; cornmeal is the foundation of your polenta, grits, corn bread, corn chips, hush puppies, tamales, and more. Put my uses together, and 4,000 items in your supermarket are made, in part, from me.
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