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Cornucopious Corn
| Article
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15332 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1989 |
3,053 Words |
| Author
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Michael Woods
Michael Woods, a contributing editor for THE WORLD & I, has
received numerous science-writing awards. |
Mention the words corn or maize and people think of golden-yellow ears of grain, eaten fresh with butter or transformed into bread, snacks, tortillas, or tamales. Indeed, maize is one of six cereals that feed the world.
In the United States and other industrialized countries, corn's predominant role in the food supply is in the production of animal protein. Corn provides more animal feed than any other grain, and thus ranks as the basic source of meat, milk, and eggs for hundreds of millions of people.
In developing nations of Central America, South America, and Africa, where poverty puts such protein-rich foods generally beyond reach, corn is the dietary staple for about 200 million people.
Yet Zea mays is far more than a cornucopia of nutrition, providing sweet corn, snack foods, margarine, cooking oil, corn syrup sweeteners, and other refined corn products found in hundreds of different food products.
"Anything that can be made from a barrel of petroleum can be made from a bushel of corn," says William M. Doane, the leader of the renowned plant polymer research group at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Northern Regional Research Center in Peoria, Illinois. The group has pioneered research on new uses for corn, including super-absorbent materials and biodegradable plastics. "For many products it's already economically feasible to [substitute corn]," Doane says. "For others, the technology still must be developed."
Corn's role in modern society already is so pervasive that it would be difficult to pass an hour without coming into contact with some product that has utilized it. Often, corn's contribution is unapparent, with most people not even recognizing corn-based products.
The smooth surface on paper used in THE WORLD & I and other publications results from processing with specially prepared or "modified" cornstarch. Cornstarches and syrups are also used in shampoo, toothpaste, underarm deodorants, hair spray, and cosmetics. Ethyl alcohol distilled from dextrose feedstock obtained from corn is an octane booster in gasoline. And dextrose from corn is the raw material in the manufacture of sorbitol, the sweetener in some low calorie foods. Corn products are used to tan and polish shoe leather, size and dye denim jeans and rayon dresses, make wallboard, wallpaper ceiling tiles, flooring, adhesives, antibiotics and other
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