ipl-logo

My Corn History Essay

458 Words2 Pages

Welcome to my world, I’m head of Corn; I 'm sweet and delicious. My history is as important today as it was to Native Americans thousands of years ago. I’m a very popular food and my original form as food, corn now Repeated Stem in nearly 4,000 industrial products. It is a renewable industrial resource, and scientists are still finding new uses for us.

Native Americans used all parts of our plant. The husks of my body are made for sleeping mats, children’s dolls, and ceremonial masks; my stalks and cobs were used for fuel. Our young corn was used as a fresh vegetable and our elderly mature kernels of corn were ground into flour. The flour is used for different items, including my favorite of corn tortillas. We began as a wild grass called …show more content…

In the 16th century, we were adopted as a food source in Africa, India and China. We were an essential food source to the Pilgrims during their first winter in America. The Native Americans provided them with our corn to keep them from starving and in the spring, showed them how to grow us and how to prepare our cornmeal and bake corn bread. What was fascinating is that we remained the staple starch of the colonists for nearly 200 years.

When we were introduced to Europe, it was considered a garden curiosity. However, we quickly became recognized as a valuable food crop for humans and livestock. We were often planted with beans and squash. This combination was called “The Three Sisters.” Our corn stalk provided a trestle for bean vines to grow on. The beans added nitrogen to the soil. Squash with its broad, spreading leaves kept the moisture in the soil from evaporating and crowded out plants that would compete with the corn for nutrients. An Indian name for corn was MA-HIZ, which the early settlers in the Americas began to call maize.

So as you can see, a head of corn has been around for many years. We are sweet and delicious and used in a variety of industrial products. When we are placed in a pot with butter, we pop, and we have been called popcorn which people eat at the movies. People eat us, on and off the cob, and we are popular with

Show More
Related

Que Vivan Los Tamales Chapter Summary

569 Words | 3 Pages

Productivity of chilies, tomatoes, avocados, and squash didn’t even reach their modern day form until 5000 B.C. Maize was domesticated in 1500 B.C.; corn could be produced at large and stored for long periods of time. Plants such as these allowed populations to grow and cities fall. Pilcher ends his introduction with the siege of Tenochtitlan. Fernando Cortes arrived in March of 1521, smallpox had taken over and Tenochtitlan’s food was cut

Read More

Jake Page Summary

542 Words | 3 Pages

Page makes this clear repeatedly throughout his second chapter. Near the end of the chapter, he notes that maize, though widely available to most populations, was not cultivated in a manner that largely effected human dietary patterns for nearly five hundred

Read More

How Did Corn Affect Early American Culture

382 Words | 2 Pages

Corn was a mainstay in the early American civilizations. They created a hardy and diverse food. It fed millions and people and was able to be used in a multitude of ways. 2. There was a change of treatment of woman when the religious belief system changed.

Read More

Que Vivan Los Tamales Analysis

560 Words | 3 Pages

Corn was associated with indians and therefore seen as inferior while wheat associated with europeans was considered superior. This cultural struggle was encompassed by the tortilla discourse. While some mexicans were adapting to some european ways, substituting corn for wheat was the hardest for Mexicans. The main reason Europeans launched this discourse was in order to create a wheat market in the country and put the rural workers into the market economy. Over time the discourse achieved its goal.

Read More

Corn In Omnivore's Dilemma

665 Words | 3 Pages

Feeding animals, corn is not healthy for anybody, this process only affects the animal's ability to grow at their own pace. In Northern America, one particular Hispanic family tree, 70% of their family members are affected with both type one and type two diabetes, which can be associated with corn. A Hispanic family member changed the way he ate by becoming vegan. One of his main reasons was to stay healthy which meant cutting corn out of his diet.

Read More

Monsanto's Harvest Of Fear Summary

845 Words | 4 Pages

Most people do not realize how many things are made from corn products and Pollan does a great job of breaking down what types of products contain corn. It is obvious that Pollan has a sort of admiration for corn, it’s hardiness, it’s versatility, but at the same time he understands that total dependence on one crop can be dangerous. However, the thesis of the essay is not really corn, but rather the fertilizer we use to grow it, specifically nitrogen right products such as ammonium nitrate. Pollen’s essay is a really interesting look at the history of how nitrogen-based fertilizers came to be so predominant in America and around the world. He discusses both their benefits and incredible dangers, such as the runoff pollution which boosts growth of algae causing the death of ocean life (903).

Read More

Columbian Exchange Research Paper

857 Words | 4 Pages

For example, potatoes and maize were extremely critical to American agriculture. Subsequently, the staple crops were able to grow in harsh conditions, making them more convenient to grow than other crops like rice and wheat. The Columbian Exchange enabled people between the New and Old World to trade staple crops, which provided more nutrition to a larger

Read More

Compare And Contrast The Columbian Exchange Between The New World And The Old World

175 Words | 1 Pages

The Columbian Exchange between the new world and the old world significantly change people’s lives. After 1492, Europeans brought in horses to America which changes the nomadic Native American groups’ living from riding on buffalos to horses. This interchange also change the diet of the rest of the world with foods such as corns (maize), potatoes which are major diet for European nowadays. 
Besides all the animals from old world to the new world, Spanish also brought in the diseases that Native Americans were not immune of, such as smallpox which led to a large amount of Native Americans’ deaths.

Read More

Columbus Exchange Disease

998 Words | 4 Pages

Before this famous exchange old World crops such as rice, wheat, and barley had never traveled to the New World; crops of the New World including maize, sweet potatoes, and manioc had never been to Afro-Eurasia. The exchange of crops had major consequences for the history of the world. Historian Alfred Crosby said, “The coming together of the continents was a prerequisite for the population explosion of the past two centuries, and certainly played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. The transfer across the ocean of the staple food crops of the Old and New Worlds made possible the former.” Plants that were formerly unknown in the Old World like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and maize expanded supply of agriculture and ensued in more nutritional foods.

Read More

The Omnivore's Dilemma By Michael Pollan

440 Words | 2 Pages

We usually don’t recognize the corn, due to companies putting corn in food coloring, flavoring etc. However, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma Todd Dawson says, “We look like corn chips with legs”(22.) This proves we are so clueless on how much corn we

Read More

The Similarities Between Mississippi Valley Indians And Native Americans

746 Words | 3 Pages

Both groups had similar diets, consuming corn, beans and squash an important trifecta of crops, known as the ‘Three Sisters’

Read More

Deforestation And The Columbian Exchange

345 Words | 2 Pages

Wheat, oats, and barely are all new foods brought to the Americas which also had weeds in between the seeds which displaced native flora and fauna.

Read More

Free Argumentative Essays: The First Thanksgiving

808 Words | 4 Pages

In 1621 the Indians taught the pilgrims how to plant and grow crops so they wouldn’t starve. After the growing came the harvesting, it was a success. They had finally done it and would not starve through the winter. The feast or thanksgiving is all about how the pilgrims had their first successful corn harvest and had plenty of food to gather and share. They shared this feast with the Indians and their leader Massasoit.

Read More

Economic And Economic Effects Of The Columbian Exchange

922 Words | 4 Pages

  Because the potato is a tuber, and therefor grows under-ground, it could be cultivated in the inhospitable lands of northern Europe and Asia.   It quickly became the food of soldiers, industrial workers,

Read More

Popcorn Definition

1653 Words | 7 Pages

The principle difference between normal and sugary-1 maize is that latter accumulate highly branched, water soluble form of polysaccharide known as phytoglycogen (Morris and Morris, 1939). In comparison to normal kernels, sugary-1 kernels have lesser dry weight,

Read More

More about My Corn History Essay

Related Topics

Open Document