It is not a gimmick. "Modern corn differs from its native ancestor more than any other edible plant...modern supersweet varieties can contain up to 40% sugar, bringing new meaning to the words candy corn...modern corn varieties are much lower in phytonutrients than the varieties raised by the earliest farmers. Blue corn...is extremely high in anthocyanins, giving it 30 times more antioxidant value than our modern white corn. Multicoloured 'Indian' corn also contains significant amounts of these compounds. One of the anthocyanins in blue corn...[in animal studies] has slowed the growth of colon cancer, blocked inflammation, lowered cholesterol and blood sugar, and even reduced weight gain caused by a high-fat diet." J Robinson Eating on the wild side 2013: 75. There is a lot more; the whole of chapter 3 of that book is about corn.
Excellent and interesting book. Wish I hadn't lent it to a bookkeeper.
Man, I am so jealous of your spread! I just moved and can't get my corn to survive yet. I got one cob off the last attempt. Used some of the kernels to try to get a strain that likes my spot. Beautiful corn!
I planted out a raised bed with corn and it just did not do well. I think it was other environmental factors, since they didn't even get to the stage of producing cobs. The one free standing one I culled from that bed and put with my tomatoes was the only one to produce a cob. So strange, but that bed also gets less sun. The corn only bed got basically 12 hours of tropic sun and I do not think the corn variety I was trying liked that.
