Disease Proof

Scientists have discovered a way to increase corn’s vitamin A content. Will Dunham of Reuters reports:

Writing on Thursday in the journal Science, the scientists identified a naturally mutated gene that enhances the provitamin A content of maize. Based on this, they developed an inexpensive way to select the parent stock for breeding corn with the highest provitamin A content.


Choosing varieties that have this mutated gene can provide on average three-fold higher levels of provitamin A, the researchers said.

There are thousands of different corn varieties, and they differ greatly in provitamin A levels, the scientists said. White corn does not have provitamin A, but yellow varieties have it in varying levels.

A common existing technique for assessing the provitamin A content of corn varieties can be prohibitively expensive for plant breeders, the researchers said, but the new one is vastly less expensive.

Here’s some more corny information—bad pun, I know—Dr. Fuhrman points out something special about organic corn. Take a look:

The researchers found flavonoids were more than 50 percent higher in organic corn and strawberries. They theorized that when plants are forced to deal with the stress of insects, they produce more of these compounds, which are beneficial to humans.1

Now, Dr. Fuhrman points out what happens to corn once you cook it. Check this out:

Cooking corn also has been shown to significantly boost its antioxidant activity, despite reduction in vitamin C.When the ability to quench free radicals was measured, cooked corn outperformed raw corn by between 25 to 50 percent. Cooking corn releases a compound called ferulic acid, which provides anti-cancer health benefits.

Corn is also a decent source of protein—YES—vegetables have protein. See for yourself:


I guess being corny isn’t so bad after all!

1. Grinder-Pederson L, Rasmussen SE, Bugel S, et al. Effect of diets based on foods from conventional versus organic production on intake and excretion of flavonoids and markers of antioxidative defense in humans. J Agric Food Chem 2003;51(19): 5671-5676.