The value of corn for human consumption is second only and, in some respects, superior to wheat. There is but slight difference in the food values of the two grains and this is found principally in the fat content, corn being the richer of the two. Delicious breads can be made from corn meal. Corn cakes and muffins can be quickly made just before a meal and if eaten hot, are more easily digested.

Possibly one of the reasons why corn has been so generally discarded as a staple food is because of the manner of preparing it for milling and in the manner of milling it. Our forefathers method is now almost unknown. After the corn had been husked and thoroughly air dried, the ears were browned uniformly in an old-fashioned oven. This brought out all the rich flavor and prepared the fat for easy digestion. The grain was then removed from the cob, cleaned and milled - stone ground - and was ready for use. Corn cakes and muffins made from this flour or meal of the whole grain tasted very much like the best home-cured ham, the flavor being due principally to the way in which the ears were roasted. Once experienced, this delicious flavor is never forgotten. This rich corn meal was not robbed of a single food element in the process of its preparation for use. The outer covering of the kernels supplied the organic mineral elements, the second covering supplied a rich phosphorus compound, and last and not least important, the seed germ furnished a vital nuclein. The old-time farm family had a manifold food in this yellow corn meal. The housewife could quickly mix and bake a golden corn bread that fascinated the eye and thoroughly satisfied the taste. A meal of such bread, with butter and milk from the home dairy, vegetables from the home garden, contained every element necessary to maintain health, strength, and vitality - a real feast, a meal for the gods. But gradually all this changed. Roller mills took the place of the "upper and nether stones," farm women, through shrewd advertising were made aware of the labor connected with old-fashioned oven roasting and induced to substitute the more finely ground, denatured product. Thus, gradually, the art of making corn meal by a natural process has become practically extinct. The roller mills had the advantage of being able to turn out a white and smooth meal but is lost in richness and flavor, and in the time, wheat flour, also denatured, took the place of corn meal.

It is not to be wondered at the men who labor hard and live a natural life should not be especially fond of these denatured products. The roller-mill corn meal furnishes practically no food value; the taste is certainly gone and only the starch remains. The human body is far better without such a "food." can we prove this last statement? We can.

For more than twelve years we made experiments on our Beverly Hall farms where we kept cows, chickens, swine, and collie dogs. When denatured corn meal was fed to any of these animals and no other food given which contained the mineral elements, fats and vital principles which had been removed from the corn, they quickly became weak, sickly, and finally died. If the whole-corn product was fed to them, with some greens, they remained healthy and vital.

Whether we like to think so or not, man's body is an animal body. It requires the same identically balanced food-substances that animals, generally subsisting on like foods, require. How then can we expect the human family to be free from tuberculosis, cancer, neuritis, neurasthenia and other ailments, when forced to subsist on foods which lack all the elements essential to balance and normality?

In reality, it is infinitely more important that man, rather than animals, should have these essential elements of food, for in these so-called by-products of corn, wheat, rice, etc., we find the phosphorus, hydrates, and vitamins essential in building healthy brain and nerve cells. Man is a thinking animal - or at least, should be - and requires almost double the amount of these elements to supply him with the energy consumed by the activity of the brain in thinking, imagining, and directing his nerve activity toward bringing his thoughts and imaginings into manifestation. If animals have any activity of this kind, it is to a very limited degree. Consider then: the animal has but to maintain his physical stability but must provide for his mental and nervous systems as well and he is deprived of the necessary food for this additional need. How can a thinking, reasoning human being, with a particle of common sense, expect the present generation to be other than defective and physically degenerate under such abnormal conditions?

The modern human is a creature of taste and perverted taste at that. He does not look to reason and knowledge to instruct him as to the foods he should eat, but, blanketing reason and his intuitive faculties, is led, as a horse by bit and bridle, by the desire of the palate.

As the attention of thinking men and women is called to the multitude who, on every hand, are victims of physical and mental agony, and as they are further impressed with the fact that this sorry condition is due principally to the consumption of denatured foods manufactured to please the eye and satisfy the taste, they begin to investigate, perhaps to think as did their forefathers, and in order to avoid suffering themselves, will demand foods which can supply their bodies with normal requirements, and which at the same time can satisfy the most fastidious taste.

Corn breads in every form should once again be made a principle article of diet, the ideal food for breakfasts, but in order to bring this about, it is necessary to educate the masses so that they will refuse the tasteless and valueless modern product and demand the properly cured and correctly milled grain, rich in all the food elements. If the housekeepers will consent to purchase only the natural, richly-flavored, corn meal, and will bake either corn bread or muffins in the morning, serving them hot with good dairy butter and a cereal coffee, they will soon find that their families will not waste a second glance on their former breakfast menus of toasted white bread, indigestible fried potatoes and nerve-wrecking coffee. And they will be happy in the knowledge that instead of giving to their beloved families food which, because of its unbalance and deficiency, really constitutes a poison, they are supplying them with nourishment which restores and maintains health, strength, vitality, and normality, and is establishing in them the basis whereon is built morality and spirituality.

The intelligent and thoughtful farmer long ago became wise to the food requirements of his stock. Attempt to sell him denatured cornmeal for his prize hogs by telling him that you have a beautifully white and smooth meal, one from which has been eliminated all the "offal" - the bran and the middlings, as well and the seed-germ - so that it can be kept a long time without spoiling! You will be answered by a wise smile. He will tell you that what he wants for his hogs is food that will make them grow and keep them growing, make and keep them smooth and sleek and fat, with strength in their bones so that they can stand on their feet. No denatured corn meal for his hogs except perhaps as a "filler" to which he will add plenty of milk as a balance. He knows that even swine cannot be successfully raised on body-destroying, disease-creating, de-mineralized food.

Attempt to sell a chicken fancier denatured corn meal: he will refuse it as a gift, unless indeed he has abundance of milk and green food to mix with it - to complete it. He knows that de-mineralized, de-germized corn first will fatten his hens, that then they will lose flesh, their combs turn pale, they will cease laying - turn out an actual financial loss. He insists on cracked or ground whole corn and to this he may even add wheat bran and other vitality-producing substances.

Intelligent raisers of cattle, whether for beef or milk purposes, insist on buying entire corn meal. To the cows they feed only a sufficient amount of this to supply the necessary fat-creating elements for the animal herself and to add the necessary fatty, organic mineral and vitamin elements to her milk; to his beef animals he feds a greater amount of the meal and less of the bran for the reason that he desires to add healthy fat and flesh to animals for sale. He knows that there is no other food which will as quickly add weight to his stock as the whole of the corn.

It is not a matter for city-dwellers to be proud of, that country people - backwoods people - hog raisers - know more of the value of food as concerns the welfare of their stock and how to increase it in commercial value, than do many of the well-educated, university-trained business or professional men know how to choose and combine food substances for the best interest of their priceless mind and body. Truly, it is time for us to awaken before the race degenerates physically to such a degree that it cannot be rebuilt.

In a previous chapter we have referred to the fearful ravages made by pellagra in many of our southern states a few years ago. Our contention was that this was chiefly due to eating too great an amount of corn meal and not a sufficiency of vegetables, and that much of the corn meal was either devitalized or naturally lacking the essential mineral elements.(1) Many investigators and physicians admit that denatured corn meal, if the deficiency is not supplied by the addition of other foods, will quickly cause pellagra or other serious ailments consequent upon malnutrition.
-----------------------------------------------------
(1) Repeated investigations seem to indicate conclusively that when corn is planted time and again in the same soil, even though crop rotation is practiced and the mineral elements which corn takes from the ground by what, for want of a better word, is termed absorption, the soil becomes "sour" and this souring brings out the aluminum in the soil. Corn grown on this aluminumized soil is said to contain an excess of upwards of 40% of this element.
When corn grown in such soil is largely consumed (as it frequently is by the poorer class of people) in conjunction with large portions of fat bacon and without the addition of such foods as will balance or offset the missing elements and the excess of aluminum in it, then, in turn the human stomach "sours," fermentation is set up, and malassimilation and various other serious ailments develop, among which are pellagra.
-----------------------------------------------------

While we claim that corn bread made from whole corn is a perfectly balanced food, with but a slight deficiency in some elements, we do not wish to be understood that it alone would be sufficient to maintain normal life. It is a complete basic food, in the same sense as milk and whole wheat are basic foods, but it must be balanced with vegetables and fruits. The eliminators must predominate in the use of all highly concentrated foods - corn, wheat, milk, cheese, eggs, fish, meats.

In modern milling, practically all of the phosphorus, gluten, organic mineral elements and vitamin-nuclein are eliminated, as well as three-fourths of the fat, and what does remain of the fat is not converted as is the fat in oven-dried meal. Because of this denaturing process, corn meal actually is disease-creating, and no young animal fed on it can grow normally or maintain health unless the amount fed is very small indeed and the balance of the diet rich in required elements. Think of it! - throughout America, with its nearly four million physically and mentally defective children, practically no non-denatured corn product can be bought except from small independent millers who make a specialty of it - this in the face of knowledge that denatured meals are not foods in the true sense and not only do not maintain health and induce normal growth but are positively injurious.

Among the organic mineral elements contained in corn meal when correctly milled, are iron, potassium, magnesium, lime, phosphorus, etc., all essential to body and nerve building. Women, who are pregnant, and children, should eat one of the corn breads in the proportion of a least one-third of the food consumed, with dairy butter, perhaps a glass of milk, and vegetables - these last fresh if possible. If this rule were faithfully followed, the number of defective children born in the United States would soon begin and continue to decrease.

During winter months, corn meal dishes may well take the place of meat, especially in the dietary of children and pregnant women. Corn meal mush, allowed to cool and thicken, sliced and fried in butter or vegetable fat, is of greater value as a whole food for adults and children than meat. It contains practically all the basic food elements of meat minus the toxins and ureas, that the organic mineral elements which are not in meat. Mush in any form with plenty of vegetables and perhaps a glass of milk, is an ideal meal usually relished by old and young. A perfectly balanced evening meal consists of corn meal mush served with milk and butter, and several vegetables, fresh if possible. Bread or potato is not to be served with this combination.
|Top|