Someone asked me today, "Why is corn so bad, anyway?"
Corn, maize, is not inherently bad, it is great! But unfortunately, corn is broken down chemically into separate components and reassembled to resemble food of all different kinds.
Here's the (very!) simplified version of why corn is bad, to my understanding:
1. most corn in the USA is genetically modified, which is not only very potentially harmful to your health (cancerous), it is also bad for the environment, bad for small farmers, and bad for the survival of the world's natural plant species. Check out this article about the accidental spread of genetically modified corn through the native cornfields of Oaxaca, ruining the indigenous strains forever.
2. most corn in the USA is subsidized by our government, which means that the government basically pays farmers to grow it, flooding the market with more corn than we need. With farmers being paid to grow more corn than we need, suppliers are forced to come up with ways to sell it in other ways besides corn-on-the-cob. It is chemically broken down into separate components and re-assembled or inserted into almost every item on the grocery shelf that is in a bag, box, or can.
And why does the governmnet pay farmers for corn? For reasons that sound good, like alternative energy. But it's silly to grow corn for alternative energy, because with current corn growing procedures, corn is fertilized with a PETROLEUM (foreign oil!) based fertilizer. It takes more energy to grow the stupid corn in the first place than the energy you can get out of it. Not only does that keep us enslaved to foreign oil, and continue to diminish the disappearing supply of oil, but it also causes nitrogen runoff that is killing off the ocean life in the Gulf of Mexico, by creating a "deadzone" that lacks enough oxygen to support marine life. The red zone in this picture shows the area of the gulf that because of current farming practices, no longer supports marine life. 
3. you are what you eat. Another drawback of corn being subsidized is that it makes the price un-naturally low, and therefore corn syrup is a cheaper sweetener than sugar. That's why all sodas etc are now made with corn syrup, and that's another reason why corn derivatives wind up in so many products. All that extra corn that the goverment pays to be grown has to be gotten rid of somehow! So it is disguised as bread and juice and hot dogs to get us dumb consumers to buy it up. Not only is this bad for your health because it is empty sugars that your body doesn't need, but also, because so many food products are made with corn products, your body is inundated with too much corn. Corn by itself is not bad, if I eat an ear of corn, with a salad and a piece of chicken and some beans, great! But if I eat packaged generic products all day, like say an egg from a caged chicken, a granola bar, a soda, a hamburger from a grain fed cow, well then all I've eaten all day is corn. That's too much corn for your body. The granola bar is sweetened with corn syrup, the soda obviously, the bread had corn products of all kinds in it if you buy the regular sliced stuff on the shelf, the jam is full of corn syrup, the meat in the hamburger comes from a cow who was fed corn which changes the meat's actual composition a good deal. The ketchup on the burger is full of corn syrup, the pickles are bathing in it, etc. etc. Too much of anything is a bad thing. if I only ate broccoli all day, that would be unhealthy, even though broccoli is healthy. Too much of a good thing, is a bad thing. 
4. Don't even get me started on the hideous tortured diseased life that a corn fed cow has to go through. I love meat, and am not against killing animals to eat them, but I think even an animal destined to be dinner should have a natural life and not be tortured before it's killed. All corn fed animals are tortured. cow's stomachs cannot process corn. it makes them get fat and reach slaughter weight faster and it also makes them sick. Then the cows are fed antibiotics because they are sick from the corn. But at least they are fat enough for slaughter, just like we will be after we consume them. The cows are also fed hormones, genetically modified corn, pesticide laced corn, and chicken waste, which is gathered by scooping it off the floors of chicken coops. The cows eat what they are fed because they are kept caged in and are hungry. All of these FDA approved practices also lead to another problem: the cow's manure, instead of being a natural biodegradable compost, is now toxic waste.
Here's a fun game: Guess which cows are grass fed and which cows are corn fed. I bet you will get it right!
Now guess which cows are happier....
I would like to add here as a side note that to those of who are concerned with animal torture and are vegetarians who so not consume meat but still consume dairy and eggs: please be aware that the laying hens that lay conventionally produced eggs are far and away the most tortured animal in food production, so if you include eggs in your vegetarian diet, be sure to choose free-range eggs.
Another side not: This doesn't have to do with corn, really... but if you avoid eating corn fed beef, you would by default be avoiding conventional hamburgers. By doing this, you are protecting yourself from eating the meat of over 300 hundred corn fed, antibiotic laced, hormone enhanced cows, in. each. bite. That's right, folks, the meat of up to 300 cows, which can be up to three years old before it even goes in the oven, is in your hamburger. Your chance of e-coli sickness and death by hamburger just went up exponentially. If you must have a hamburger or a sausage, buy a piece of grassfed meat and ask the butcher too grind it up for you, or find a restaurant like The Blind Lady Ale House in San Diego's Normal Heights, where the chefs laboriously prepare fresh sausage in the back on a daily basis, or The Linkery, in North Park, where you can get a hamburger from a pastured cow who enjoyed their life.
But I digress. Back to corn: The reasons I mentioned are only a few reasons why corn is bad. For further information I definitely recommend reading the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. The book is entertaining and easy to read, and fascinating and educational to boot. Just buy a copy on Amazon.com or better yet at a local bookstore, or get it at "the library" (I'm sure some of you have heard of libraries, right? It was this cool building I used to go to as a kid... they have books in there! for free!), and when you're done reading it, pass it along to your friends to spread the word. 
So that, my friends, is a very short and sorry diatribe on why I think "corn" is bad. But don't take my word for it! Check it out for yourself. Or you could just stop eating processed corn products, and notice how great you will feel and how much energy you will have.
I am so grateful that my parents raised me on a diet free from fast food, coca-cola and other non-foods. I will never forget my childhood food memories. As a young 'un, from when I was born till when I was seven, we lived out in the country. Picking strawberries in the garden till my fingers (and mouth) were red, pulling up carrots from the sawdust, eating miner's lettuce in the forest, shelling walnuts down at the bottom of the hill, eating a bowl of freshly picked blackberries and fresh cream for dessert, or better yet, Mom's homemade blackberry pie... picking cherries perched high up in the cherry tree, gathering eggs from our chickens and ducks carefully in my little basket. Watching the asparagus poke their way out of the ground. Scooping out the insides of zucchinis that had grown too large and stuffing the inside with cheese and marinara sauce to bake. At our next house, later in life, in town and away from our big garden in the country, we transformed the ratty back yard into another vegetable garden and we had lots of fruit trees too. I learned to make applesauce and plum jam and how to can it to save for winter. I learned to grow squashes and beans and lettuces and potatoes and onions. I learned that having only one avocado tree means that you won't get any avocados... they need a boy tree and a girl tree! I learned that, while I hate persimmons, I love persimmon cookies (another Mom specialty) and that little white peaches from a tiny tree taste more like a peach should taste than any other peach I have ever tasted. I ate baskets of tomatoes, that TASTE like tomatoes. To this day my favorite way to eat a tomato is to just pull it off the bush and eat it. I ate salmon that was caught by my uncles that day and bar-b-qued over the fire pit Bar-b-q in the backyard. I ate homemade pasta, and even made homemade donuts. To this day I won't eat a store bought donut. You couldn't pay me enough money.
A word on donuts here is appropriate. Now, I HATE store bought donuts because I can strongly taste the dough-conditioner, which increases the shelf life, while simultaneously increasing your intake of chemicals. My taste buds and body is very sensitive to preservatives and chemicals. Yuck I hate donuts! But, Homemade donuts, however, Homemade with a capital H, are one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. I feel about them the exact opposite way that I feel about store bought bakery donuts. Both Mom and Grandma made donuts with me. Sigh.
We also learned to make tortillas, and I even made homemade candy at Christmas time. Hey... I know candy isn't healthy but it's sure a lot healthier to make your own than to buy the food coloring and corn syrup and hydrogenated oil filled stuff they sell at the store. :) Dad made waffles from scratch, none of those packaged eggo craps at my house! Big salads of home grown spinach and lettuces from romaine to red leaf. Fresh squeezed orange juice for everyone was a special treat on some mornings when Dad was feeling ambitious. Eggs from our own chickens, my favorite chicken being Etta Leilani (named by me, I'm afraid) taste so much better than those silly white ones I see at the store. Egg yolks are supposed to be ORANGE, not yellow... And just thinking about a tall glass of fresh cold goat milk makes my mouth water... how many people would say that? :) Don't get me wrong, my parents fed me corn chips too... but they were organic BLUE corn chips... So, thanks to my parents, I got a foundationally healthy body, and a lot of tasty dinner table memories, too. What an amazing gift.
I am excited to find here in San Diego, or at least in my neighborhood of San Diego, Normal Heights, nestled between the freeways 8, 805, and 15, a surprising awareness of food, as well as in my neighboring community of North Park. Both of my restaurant jobs, (one in each neighborhood) feature local, seasonal produce, sustainably raised meats, and home-made everything. As icing on my cake of healthy food in my life here, a new popsicle store just opened up down the street from me! It is called Vivapops! and it makes popsicles from scratch with local, organic and seasonal ingredients. The mojito-lime-mint and the blackberry-chocolate one were great as well. They even have a super green foods popsicle that has kale and collard greens from our local farmer's market, how cool is that!
But I digress. My point is, wake up and decide what to eat. Whatever your opinion is about corn or cows or popsicles, don't the FDA choose for you. Choose your own food. Food is our fuel. Food is our life. Choose your life.
