Food and Me, #4: On Corn and how it is in everything.

...And I needed to be ready to do anything in order to have the willpower to give up corn!

I was still feeling miserable when my mom came to visit me in August of last year.  In fact, I had lost a whole week out of a six week class and had to apply for extensions for my papers.  I didn't think of myself as sick, I just had headaches sometime, so it really got my attention when my health was holding me back from my school work.

When my mom told me that migraines are frequently caused by food allergies, I was interested, but unconvinced.  From what I've read about migraines (especially on nytimes.com) there is very little that doctors can do to treat migraines.  It seemed too easy to say they could be cured by avoiding a certain food.  Besides, I've always kind of resented picky eaters, and I was convinced that allergy sufferers were another kind of picky eater.  But after a little preliminary testing, Mom and I decided that I was probably allergic to corn, and I decided to try to eliminate corn from my diet. 

It seems easy, right?  I don't eat that much of the yellow stuff, maybe a couple corn-on-the-cobs a year and sometimes some frozen corn or corn bread.  I did eat a lot of popcorn, but I was pretty sure I could survive without it.  I knew to avoid corn starch and corn syrup (including the high fructose kind) and found that these were the foods that would immediately give me a headache if I had them.  But after a month of somewhat half-heartedly avoiding all these things, I still had headaches.  So I thought that maybe I should do some research about corn allergies online.

What I discovered was stunning.  There are so many more foods with corn than I ever dreamed!  Here is a picture of all the corn-laden products I had in my house at the time I checked the website:

Needless to say, I started to become a little overwhelmed.  My wheat flour was contaminated with corn (same milling machines), all canned goods (citric acid), any condiment made with white vinegar, things with "natural" sweetener xylitol (including most chewing gums), breads, even shampoo and conditioner!  For a complete list of trouble ingredients, check this website.  The documentary King Corn also discusses how corn is in many of the foods we eat today.

I have made long, slow progress against the allergy.  I was used to cooking for myself, but not to the extent that I now had to.  Everything had to be made from scratch with the corn-free substitute ingredients that I found.  There were no short cuts and there were very few restaurants where I could eat at with confidence.  I was also constantly finding new things that I was sensitive to, as I eliminated corn and became more sensitive.  So I found it really hard to enjoy food.  I was pretty hungry for a couple months.

But the good news is that I've gradually found foods I can eat with confidence and many of them are organic or local brands that perhaps I should have been eating in the first place.  But my supermarket-trained obsession with the getting the lowest price and the best deal had been holding me back (I'll explain this a little in the next post).  Clint and I aren't rich, but when we find healthy food that is nourishing, it's worth it to spend the extra little bit. 

And I've also found that it was worth it to spend the extra time that it took to make our food.  At first I found it very exhausting and frustrating.  Many of our favorite recipes from the past few years were no longer useful.  I felt I was starting over again from the beginning.  But the work researching groceries, trying new recipes, and plain old cooking and washing dishes has continued to have the effect of planting my feet on the ground.  I'm not just a mind who happens to have a body, but a whole person.  Taking care of myself, my body, is important work, and it teaches me about God.  And in the last month I've been convicted that it's just as important to eat slowly and enjoy my food.  Food is not just fuel for my machine, it is a good gift from God.  I have a new-found gratefulness for my daily bread.

Food and Me, #2: The Middle Years

The next stage in my autobiography of eating is “leaving home.”  Growing up, I had learned how to use a recipe responsibly, but it was easier just to follow the instructions on the back of a box or sauce package.  I only needed this knowledge intermittently anyway.  I didn’t think too seriously about eating; it was just something I had to do. I was much more concerned with talking, thinking, having brilliant epiphanies, writing poems, etc.

The first few years away from home I spent mostly in the cafeteria at Cedarville, affectionately known as Chuck’s. Of course, like any college freshman who hadn’t been allowed ice cream, soda, or Lucky Charms, I had them all frequently.  Over time I developed my habits:  Pizza, pizza sandwiches, maybe salad, or an odd Belgian waffle.  Always a glass of water and a glass of Sprite mixed with Cranberry juice.  (I did go through a soy milk phase, I don’t remember why).  If we didn’t eat very nutritiously, the one think we did very well at Chuck’s was eat together.  I always ate with friends, and especially at lunch, we tended to linger talking and sipping coffee and going back for ice cream until they kicked us out.  I laughed a lot and gossiped a lot and I have fond memories in that place.

These first years of college I began to suffer from headaches.  I didn’t think of myself as sick at all.  Just every once in a while I got a headache, tried to sleep it off, and felt better.  After a while they started to get worse and cause me nausea.  But I still didn’t think about it too much.

It was study abroad that really started to make me think a new way about eating.  In England, I had to cook for myself.  I didn’t eat fancy, but I did buy fresh veggies regularly and this yummy probiotic drink called Yakult.  I loved the freedom of stopping in the Sainsbury’s Local and picking up a few things for the week.  I loved popping in cafes and restaurants for a pecan Danish or a bacon-brie-and-cranberry baguette.  I started to realize just how bad some American foods are.  The average supermarket bread in England was a million times better than American bread and dead cheap.  The cheeses available were AMAZING (Hello, Cheddar is actually a place!  And its not the only one where they make cheese.).  Some of my best memories of Oxford are of cooking, eating, drinking tea and telling stories with my housemates in our little kitchen.

Spain changed everything.  I lived with a family who ate fairly traditional Spanish food:  coffee and toast for breakfast (fresh buns bought daily); a big afternoon meal at 2 with a salad (always the same: iceburg lettuce, tomatoes, half a can of corn, onion, sea salt, vinegar and oil), a freshly warmed baguette, and usually some variety of soup or beans or maybe an artichoke in broth, finished with green olives (with the pit!) and Laughing Cow type cheese, then an orange, onto the peel of which la Señora would tap the ashes for her after dinner smoke, filling the room with this wonderful sweet burning smell; and a small, late, cold dinner.  I absolutely adore Spanish food.  The only headaches I got in Spain were on Sundays when la Señora didn’t make coffee… caffeine withdrawl.

Then I returned to the US.  Where my parents had moved from the city to a small town and did most of their shopping at Super Wal-Mart.

P.S.  Two notes:  1) my word count has swelled to 600 words.  This feels like a more natural cut off for me. 2) I want to apologize if in my first food post, I belittled anyone who writes a recipe blog.  I should have said that my expertise is theology (and autobiography, since I haven’t gotten to much theology yet—I promise, they’re related) so I will stick to that.  I’m still a novice about food, but I’m learning.