Corn-fed Consumers

This week's assignment was difficult, to say the least, and definitely made me realize that we are all just a bunch of corn-fed consumers. Unless one were to go on a raw food diet and completely avoid corn itself, I seriously doubt corn could ever be escapable. And even if one were to carefully examine the contents of one's diet for corn by-products, as many of my classmates have mentioned, nobody can ever be completely certain that the raw foods themselves that we eat never encountered an herbicide or pesticide (even organic!) that contained corn.

I started out the assignment with a fair amount of confidence that I could avoid eating corn. In the morning I had plain greek yogurt which, miracle of miracles, actually did NOT contain any of the items on that very, very long list of corn-based additives. I also had a pear (although, as I mentioned, I can't be sure what sort of herbicides or pesticides were used on the produce). For lunch I had a homemade hummus-like spread that contained chickpeas, garlic, carrots and, because I felt the need to take the assignment super seriously, a quick homemade mayo/aioli thing. I ate the mix with more carrots, celery and cucumber slices because my pita bread and whole-wheat bread were both chock-full of those aforementioned corn-based additives, despite the fact that they are intended to be primarily wheat-based.

During dinner was when I had to give up. I live with three roommates and we take turns making dinner, so even though I chose to do the assignment on a day that was my turn to cook, I felt too bad to make my roommates suffer along side me in my quest to eat an entirely corn-free meal. I did try - I made a simple pasta with fresh tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil salt and pepper - but the pasta and olive oil both contained items off of that dreaded list, and so did my supposedly all-natural kosher salt. Go figure.