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Comment by orangepurple | Hacker News Reader

> Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans.

> The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol.

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

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It is digestible post processing like after nixtamalization to turn it into masa. No 2 corn is used in tortillas, snack foods and other processed corn products. That sentence is misleading, because yes straight off the cob you can't eat it.

https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/t...

To add to that I'm sure this country eat more tortillas than actual corn...

This also hints that our food production is more complex than you would first expect, in a true food crunch there are likely many substitute diet options which can be made by processing inedible agriculture products or repurposing fields.

All you have to do is dry and grind it to make cornmeal. It's quite digestible, and keeps very well, like wheat. (I've never tried eating it fresh like sweet corn, may have to add that to the bucket list.)

A problem is it is lacking in free niacin, which can result in pellagra, if the diet is principally corn meal. Nixtamalization corrects that[0].

Without nixtamalization, cornmeal doesn't form a dough. You can make corn bread, but not tortillas.

Corn chips, e.g. Fritos, and corn bread don't use nixtamalized corn, but they are quite digestible!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

Sure but something else could be planted in its place or the acreage could go to conservation and absorb more carbon.

Could we use it as a diet food if it’s indigestible?

You aren't going to get thin eating corn chips. That combination of fat and high glycemic carbohydrate is one of the worst.

The corn in corn chips has undergone nixtamalization, which makes more of the nutrients available to humans.

As others have commented, no. 2 yellow field corn can be ground into cornmeal, and even without nixtamalization, it is certainly digestible by humans, it's just that nixtamalization makes important nutrients like niacin available.

Sorry, it has not.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_chip

Thanks for the clarification. FWIW I was interpreting "corn chip" to mean a tortilla chip, but yep, you're right.

I think it's the lack of nixtamalization that makes cornbread so nice and gritty and corn chips so nice and crunchy. Try Ottofile dent, if you can find it or grow it.

Dietary fat does not contribute to weight gain any more than any other macronutrient. This long lived myth needs to die. Similarly dietary cholesterol also likely does not contribute significantly to blood levels.

Fat combined with refined carbohydrates produces a strong insulin reaction, which directly results in fat deposition. This is not a myth. [0]

I agree with you in that fat, by itself, does not promote weight gain. It's the combination that does.

[0] https://smile.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About-ebook/dp/B003W...

Digestibility of corn post-processing aside, who eats the animals?

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