Feeding your children while avoiding corn and ingredients derived from corn is far more challenging than meets the eye.
It's not: corn syrup, corn meal, corn starch...it's not that simple at ALL. It is amazing what can be done with corn, and I had no idea it is in nearly everything on our grocery store shelves...and I was feeding it to my child throughout our daily meals. We had been moving toward a whole food diet, but I still relied on some snack foods (whole grain crackers, pretzels, breads and cereals...and 100% juice, yogurt, occasional treats, ibuprofen, tylenol, and the list goes on and on). We'd been moving toward more organic foods as well, but even organic products have corn.
Learning to provide food without corn for my daughter has certainly increased our food budget, but the bright side is that we are all eating even healthier than before, and we are eating higher quality foods! Corn-based ingredients are a cheap way to fill the shoes of another, higher quality, higher cost ingredient in many cases. It has made me re-think corn consumption for our whole family, not just our daughter.
Here is a comprehensive list of ingredients derived from corn. The first time I looked at this list I was shocked and overwhelmed! I have begun to seen trends over time for the most common ingredients, so I can usually identify the problem ingredients without cross checking. For people with severe corn allergies, there are a lot of online resources, and they react to anything with corn in it - body washes, make up, toothpaste, prescription drugs, the list goes on and on!! You can get an idea about that here.
