The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Golden Bantam, the corn in question, is an heirloom variety introduced in 1902, long before the hybridizers figured out how to amp up the sweetness in sweet corn. This momentous change in the genetics of our corn is an artifact of an industrial food chain, which demands that vegetables be able to endure a cross-country road trip after picking so that they might be available everywhere the year round. This was a particular problem for corn, the sugars of which begin turning to starch the moment it is picked. So in the early sixties the breeders figured out a way to breed in extra copies of the genes responsible for producing sugars. But something was lost in the translation from local to cosmopolitan corn: The kernels lost much of their creaminess, and the specific taste of corn was overwhelmed by a generic, one-dimensional sweetness.