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Commodity corn on the cob is highly processed? Was that a mistake?
by cma 4y ago
Commodity corn on the cob is highly processed? Was that a mistake?
- djur 4y agoI think there's a good point to be made here: selective breeding has resulted in fruits and vegetables that are nutritionally far different from their predecessors, and yet we usually consider those foods "natural" and "unprocessed". Corn is much sweeter than it was even a few decades ago.
- colechristensen 4y agoThe corn you eat off the cob is a very specific set of varieties which make up a tiny tiny tiny percentage of corn crops produced for other purposes. Bred to have sugars instead of starches at a specific development stage, and mostly to keep that for long enough to make it through the supply chain. Actual fresh properly ripe sweet corn is a kind of “loses its best characteristics in hours” situation, unfortunately. Sweet corn traits have little to do with the rest of the corn crop. Any corn (maize) is unrecognizable compared to its unmodified form and has been for hundreds or thousands of years.
- cma 4y agoI've never heard "processed" refering to selecrive breeding or genetic engineering. I thought it meant mechanical processing, heating/drying, and/or sometimes shelf-stabilization with chemicals. I don't think corn on the cob is considered processed, other than the harvesting and possibly shucking process if shucked.
- chubot 4y agoI would think of "corn" as a very overloaded word It wouldn't make economic sense to use the same thing for corn on the cob vs. doritos / Frito Lay vs. high fructose corn syrup, and it likely isn't In the last case, it's mostly chemistry and it doesn't even matter what the original plant was ---- that said the corn at the farmer's market is way better than supermarket corn :) And just as cheap (when it's in season), unlike some other produce