Story by Sachie Yorck | Photos by Blake Hamilton
For any college student taking a break from studying in search of some midnight munchies, for the recipients of candied sweethearts wrapped in homemade boxes and attached to love letters, for those seeking the best deals on packaged food at the grocery store, for the everyday citizen caught in the national marketplace—it’s hard not to consume corn.
Modern American life depends on corn. In this country, countless consumer products are made with it. From the foods and drinks we consume, to the complicated processes we rely on, corn is consistently seen as the starting point of agricultural development.
With all the possibilities for a grain easily grown on U.S. terrain, no wonder corn became mass produced and consumed in nearly every imaginable way. One crop can contribute to foods, starches, alcohol, preservatives, alternative sweeteners, and livestock feed. Corn silages in the Midwest often overflow with harvest surpluses.
“Here in America, if a little is good, then a lot must be better,” says Sandi Thompson, a nutritional therapist in Eugene, Oregon. She encourages her clients to stay away from packaged foods as much as possible—the less refined, the better. Thompson also suggests looking at ingredient lists and avoiding “anything you can’t pronounce.”
Even still, many pronounceable ingredients derive from processes that are more difficult to understand. Cornstarch, for instance, is produced by slicing up germ cells from ground corn to help create sweeteners, thickeners, preservatives, baked dishes and even ordinary paper.
Only through several treatments of enzymes can one make corn syrup. What results is an enzymatic conversion of glucose into a fructose to generate a common sugar replacement: high-fructose corn syrup.
Despite all the complex processes involved, industrial America has heavily invested in corn. Thompson attributes this trend to the cheap price in the United States. “It would be great to eliminate [corn] from our diets and food sources, but there’s just too much investment,” she says.
Americans are especially protective about their sweets. On Halloween alone, retail candy sales equal more than two billion dollars. Unknown to many people, one of the main components contributing to the popularity of American tasty treats is, faking it. In fact, many supposed saccharine snacks do not contain real sugar, though the strong sweetness may taste otherwise. What causes the tips of tongues and the roots of teeth to tingle was actually once born in a cornfield.
Welcome to the world of high-fructose corn syrup—filling drink cups, flavoring cough medicine, topping salads, accenting meat, and ingraining itself into most modern processed foods in the United States. It’s a $2.6 billion industry, with only four companies controlling 85 percent of the profits.
Scientists first invented high-fructose corn syrup in 1967 when they converted glucose-heavy corn syrup into fructose using acids and enzymes. The final mixture blends fructose with lesser levels of pure glucose. The whole procedure is cheap to produce and easy to transport.
Local health food stores typically avoid genetically modified products “GMOs,” especially in Eugene. However, some alternative markets still shelve ketchups with high-fructose corn syrup. Graham Kroese, vitamins clerk at Sundance Natural Foods, says their store regularly screens its merchandise for genetically modified products. Kroese says Sundance dislikes genetic modification for its inorganic materials and potential for cross-contamination and by-products.
“It’s everywhere—it’s omnipresent,” Kroese says. “The average American consumes twelve teaspoons of high fructose corn syrup a day.”
High-fructose corn syrup grabbed the public’s eye for its alleged threat to consumers’ health. Thompson says there is empirical evidence that suggests links high-fructose corn syrup and obesity, diabetes, mineral deficiencies, and even cancer. Kroese cites a recent study that found detectable quantities of mercury in products that listed high-fructose corn syrup as a primary ingredient. He adds that some companies use mercury-grade lye chemicals to remove starch from kernel.
“When we eat a lot of it, our bodies can’t really tell what we’ve had,” Kroese says.
In a 2007 study, Saint Louis University researchers supplied test groups of rats with high-fructose corn syrup as a substitute for fat. Within sixteen weeks, the scientists observed that the specimen, although not forced to eat, ate much more frequently than before. These results concluded that fructose may suppress fullness, allowing for over-consumption of the sugar carbohydrates.
“It took only four weeks for liver enzymes to increase and for glucose intolerance—the beginning of type II diabetes —to begin,” said a leading researcher in the project, Dr. Brent Tetri, , in a May 2007 press release.
Other studies have reinforced the idea that high-fructose corn syrup prolongs hunger symptoms.

Corn as a sugar substitute came shortly after high tariffs were placed on foreign goods. The Jones-Costigan Sugar Act, enacted in 1934, implemented quotas and subordinate limitations on sugar imports, thereby motivating U.S. citizens to find domestic alternatives.
When the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation emerged in 1938, farmers were better able to survive in the rising economic standards. By 1980, most crops and regions were eligible for insurance. A 1994 act mandated the program in order to receive deficiency payments, price support programs and, loans. Catastrophic coverage was also included.
Each year, U.S. corn subsidies reel in the biggest crop subsidy amounts, totaling $56.2 billion from 1995 to 2006. In the past decade, Congress has passed several emergency supplemental bills that offer up to 100 percent production payments.
Although corn demands large amounts of nitrogen and degrades soil quickly, investors still look to produce more corn more efficiently, using complicated artificial fertilizers. The demand for corn is immense from a culture that has grown supremely dependent on the grain.
“Corn we consume is not the corn the Indians consume,” Thompson says. Like all things American, corn has been cultivated, modified, perfected for efficiency and then mass-produced.
Most of the corn comes from what is known as the “Corn Belt,” a cluster of Midwestern states that uses corn as a their top economic revenue, where silages overflow and farms are forced to specialize in one crop—in a genetically modified form called yellow dent.
Daryl Eash, herd manager at Platt’s Oak Dairy Farms in Independence, Oregon, admits that the Northwest doesn’t have the best terrain or long summers to efficiently grow corn. “It takes a lot of heat units to get corn here,” he says. “Farms only do it if you can make money.”
While many western states must import their grains, Platt’s grows nearly 1,000 acres of corn. Yet, they must keep every plant to feed the dairy cows. By autumn, the field that recently thrived in rows of towering corn looks dusty and feral, scattered dried leaves floating on the plunged ground. Platt’s cornfield stretches farther than the eye can see, up on top of the perched hills and then some.
Across a rocky dirt road, the sound of shuffling hooves and deep moos echo through the air. Mountains of feed grains pile in separate bunkers, ranging from soy and grass to corn grain, cornmeal, and seeds. The animals eagerly chow down on the mixed feed set in front of them, unaware that their food took multiple chemistry equations to get there.
“A lot of people don’t like genetic bases, but you gotta use it,” Eash says. “We gotta embrace the technology.”
At K&M Farms Inc. in White Cloud, Kansas, the corn and soybean crops use fertilizers made from nitrogen, phosphate, and hot ash. Owner Ken McCauley says biotechnology is similar to hybridization, both incurring cross-pollination in the field and laboratory.
“If you didn’t have a lot of modern things your life wouldn’t be the same. It’s just like agriculture; we’ve changed for the better,” McCauley says.
He also argues that most farms are not commercial, but rather family enterprises. McCauley has farmed with his family for more than forty years. He lives in the house his great-grandfather built on K&M Farm’s 4,500 acres, and nowadays, his son manages the business. Yet, even this family business sends off their harvest to Frito-Lay Cheetos production.
Corn, although intrinsic in the sustenance of modern American life, raises questions about its rapid evolution. Companies have manufactured endless uses of corn and the viability for processed corn does not appear to recede anytime soon. The way Americans consume the genetically modified crop could very well turn the Corn Belt into a corn waistline.