I often like to think that Maize Corn is the soul of North America. It was invented in Mexico way back when, and it's been the staple crop across the land ever since. It's real productive and real easy compared to wheat or barley or sorghum or rice, so it's been the foundation of civilization for all of those Central American city state empires, and the building block of a prosperous settled society along the Gulf Coast from the Rio Grande all the way to the Atlantic, for at least the last four thousand years.
And it's the foundation of the White Man's civilization today! Mostly as a cash crop now, grown for making a cheaper and easier sugar than sugarcane could ever be. There's high-fructose corn syrup in all of those packaged goods and there's corn-based products in so many waxes and polishes and sundry goods.
I've come to understand this over the years. I started to understand it when I watched a documentary called "King Corn", about how much high-fructose corn syrup gets into everything and isn't that disgusting!
They made the point that a specific type of carbon only found in corn has been detected in people across the U.S. Their point was that us Statesians are all made of corn. They made it sound scary.
But now that I think about how long corn has been the staple crop around here, I think, well, you might as well say Japanese people are made of rice, or English people are made of wheat, or Andean folks are made of potatoes. Of course we've all got corn in our blood. This is North America!
No, the real trouble with all that high-fructose corn syrup is that it makes sugar even easier to get than before, and that's not good for anyone. Sugarcane is already the bane of the world. I'm sad to see that Maize Corn has been turned into something unhealthy. I often think that you can tell how this continent is doing by its corn, and what with the vast monocultures of cash-crop junk food...
I'd say we're not doing good.