Turning Corn Into Gold

Before you continue reading, take a minute to think about what you ate yesterday. Unless you ate only fruits and vegetables (Props to you for your self-discipline), everything you had can, in one way or another, be broken down to one ingredient: corn. You might be asking yourself, "How is a Pepsi or steak made from corn?" I didn't believe it myself until I read Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.    Using "food science" we have been able to take apart this small, fragile kernel and transform it into the various macronutrients that everyday foods we know and love are built on. The most ironic part about corn being the center of processed foods is the fact that people are willing to pay tenfold for it. One of my favorite quotes in the first part of Pollan's book is one where he compares the price of commodity corn with cereal. He writes:

In many ways breakfast cereal is the prototypical processed food: four cents' worth of commodity corn (or some other equally cheap grain) transformed into four dollars' worth of processed food. What an alchemy! 

Isn't that a wake-up call? All the branding and packaging add value and thus drive up the price of the end product. They're also what draws consumers out from buying the generic brands, which are made from exactly the same ingredients. (I'm guilty of choosing General Mills' Honey Nut Cheerios over Market Pantry's Honey & Nut Toasted Oats.) The food empires of the world can be traced back to the farm, but the majority of profits never reach the corn harvester. Yet somehow, once upon a time, the food world took this morsel of a plant and turned it into gold.