Today I am talking about the difference between real food and manufactured calories. 

When you make a choice about what to eat, the question is this: Is this real food that nourishes, or is it manufactured calories, an invention of the 20th century? Some things in life are black and white, like a coin toss at the start of a football game. But it’s not always so simple. Between black and white may be found a spectrum of grays. That’s what I want to talk about today.

A discussion about real food and manufactured calories acknowledges this spectrum. Corn is a great example. Like other real foods, corn grows on a plant that originates in the earth. It can be eaten straight off the cob, the sooner the better. I have a friend who likes to share memories of having eaten fresh-picked, raw sweet corn years ago when he worked on a collective farm.

Once corn is picked, however, the sugars in the kernels begin immediately to be converted to starches, which are not as sweet. One step removed, but still “real,” is the corn from the same crop, purchased a few days later from the supermarket, and then boiled for a few minutes until bright yellow. It might be eaten directly off the cob, or perhaps the kernels would be sliced off to make salsa, or a corn-and-bean salad.  Maybe those kernels are flash-frozen or canned for consumption some months or years later. It still looks and tastes like corn as we know it, and it’s definitely corn, as most 5-year-olds can tell you. Little by little though, we are moving farther and farther away from the date and place that the corn was picked.

Some of that corn will be dried and then crushed to become corn meal that retains the germ and the outer covering. Whole-grain corn meal, manufactured in comparatively small amounts, will end up in specialty stores, farmers markets, and organic food stores and restaurants.

Large amounts of product will be defatted or degerminated, with the removal of its nourishing germ. This process will markedly decrease the nutritional value of the corn meal. In order not to cause nutritional deficiencies in the large numbers of people who consume this degerminated corn meal, selected nutrients will be returned in a process called enrichment. This enriched corn meal is bound, in extraordinarily large quantities, for fast food restaurants, snack food manufacturers, and commercial bakeries the world over. Note that only stripped corn meal requires enrichment.

Corn meal is used to make corn muffins, corn bread, corn dogs, and other products. An essential ingredient in fast-food establishments, it is dusted on the top and bottom of hamburger buns. Some corn meal is diverted for the manufacture of corn chips, which I think of as the quintessential example of manufactured calories. Note how far we have now moved from the sweet corn that was picked on that long-ago summer day.

An additional manufacturing stream will be used to generate high-fructose corn syrup, which is much cheaper than sugar and has extraordinary economic value as a sweetener in the manufacture of highly processed products, all at the expense of our health. We are no longer in the realm of real food.

I am not advising you not to eat any corn chips at all. I don’t think a handful of corn chips a few times a year will affect your immune system or cause an irreversible increase in inflammation. Just like a bit of “enriched corn meal” probably isn’t going to cause a heart attack or diabetes, I think we can all handle a little on occasion. The bigger problem is that we’re drowning in it. It’s everywhere, and we eat ultraprocessed versions of corn constantly. The more processed or manufactured an item, the more easily it is absorbed and metabolized. And the quicker you absorb it, the more insulin you waste.  

So here are my recommendations:

1. Eat more fresh corn or frozen corn.
2. Eat more whole-grain corn meal and less “refined” corn meal.
3. Avoid stripped corn meal to the extent possible, unless, of course, you’re a guest in someone’s house.
4. Eat fewer chips and more real corn. More real food and fewer manufactured calories. Especially corn chips, which have little if any redeeming nutritional value.