Corn= Ninja

Remember my surprise when I found on the Celestial Seasonings website that citric acid can be derived from corn? Well, I didn’t think too much about it until I was looking at a shelf of delicious jam. My boyfriend and I are jam fiends and plan to make hundreds of kinds once berries and fruit are in season, but for now we are sticking to buying the stuff other people make. I’ve been trying to find a safe variety of boysenberry because the kind I usually buy contains corn syrup. The varieties I was looking at in this instance looked safe for the most part, except for the addition of citric acid.

I sincerely hope that the makers were using citric acid made from foods other than corn, but I didn’t risk it. It nearly broke my heart to leave the pomegranate jelly behind! Apparently, citric acid can be found in various berries and a few vegetables like tomatoes.
http://www.foodadditivesworld.com/articles/citric-acid-foods.html
As an additive, it can be found in soda, ice cream, and sauces. I plan to take a look in my kitchen to see just how many products have it listed!

My boyfriend said that he has eaten other foods that have had citric acid added and believes that it wouldn’t contain “whatever it is in corn that he’s related to” (the uncertainty is in his words, not mine!). Still, he tries not to take that chance. That’s smart of him, but for other people with corn intolerance simply avoiding corn products is hard, especially since so many additives can be made from it. Here’s a scary list I found of all the things that are made from corn:
http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php

Although I’m glad that we’ve been able to find so many uses for corn, I’m also a little intimidated by it. Sure, the chemicals are coming at least in part from a natural source and at least they aren’t being synthesized in a laboratory. However, most people just glance over the ingredients on this list. Most of those things on the list I barely can pronounce, let alone state the origin. How much money would it cost to add a little line at the bottom saying “Includes ingredients synthesized from corn” or something to that effect? This is the sort of thing that is really ticking me off about the confusion on today’s labels. There is nearly no indication about the potential for allergens except for the occasional “this product processed in a plant which also processes soy, wheat, etc” Even that is a little less frequent than I would prefer. At least it’s better than nothing.

(image from here)

PS: I encourage you to visit the link to the website above. I just Googled a picture and wound up with a rather interesting walk through how often corn hides in unexpected places!