This is "glass corn," a traditional, multi-coloured translucent variety, a picture of which made the rounds last year. Lovely, isn't it? Honestly, I wouldn't have a clue how to cook with it, but that doesn't make me covet it less. Mother Earth News has the
fascinating story of the man who recovered this heritage variety; the original seed was obtained from Carl L. Barnes of Oklahoma.
Carl is of half Cherokee, half Scotch-Irish ancestry and was born in
the family’s original farmhouse about a half-mile from his current home.
His father had moved the family west, where they acquired land and set
up farming on the High Plains. Carl spent his childhood on this
homestead, and the family lived through the 1930s Dust Bowl years,
staying to survive the ordeal rather than leaving as many did at that
time in our history.
As a youth, Carl began to seek out his
Cherokee roots, exploring the knowledge of his own ancestors and of
Native American traditions in general, by learning from his grandfather.
Much of this quest centered on the ceremonies surrounding planting,
harvesting, and honoring seeds. Carl went on to earn a degree in
Agricultural Education, and later in his adult years worked with the
Cooperative Extension Service. He also spent several years serving with
the Kansas Highway Patrol. Carl continued working the farm, along with
his wife Karen, and they raised a family.
In the course of growing
some of the older corn varieties still being farmed at that time, Carl
began noticing ancestral types of corn re-appearing in his crops. As he
isolated these, he found many of the variants to match up with
traditional corns that had been lost to many of the Native tribes –
particularly those peoples who had been relocated during the 1800s to
what is now Oklahoma. Thus, he was able to re-introduce specific corn
types to the elders of those tribes, and this helped their people in
reclaiming their cultural identities. The corn is, to them, literally
the same as their blood line, their language, and their sense of who
they are.
The Globe and Mail today has
an interesting story about the traditional remedies and how they are not always what they seem:
...when scientists from the University of Guelph scoured the DNA in a
number of herbal products, they found that many times the labels on the
merchandise didn’t accurately reflect what was in the container.
Some
products contained fillers like wheat or rice that were not listed on
the label. Some were contaminated with other plant species that could
have caused toxicity or triggered allergic reactions. And still others
contained no trace of the substance the bottle purported to contain.
“It says gingko biloba ... and we didn’t find any gingko DNA at all
in the bottle,” said Steve Newmaster, an integrative biology professor
at the university who was the first author on the paper.
In fact,
about a third of the 44 products Newmaster and his co-authors tested
were instances of what he called product substitution – alfalfa sold as
gingko, for example. He said those two substances in powder form would
be indistinguishable without testing.
People buying herbal
products need to know they may not be getting what they are paying for –
and they may be ingesting something they aren’t expecting, said
Newmaster, who is also the botanical director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, which is the home of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding.
“Because
you spend a lot of money to buy a health product, you care about your
health, and then you’re not getting what you think you’re getting.”
The study is being published Friday in the journal BMC Medicine.
About a third of the products tested had products substituted. That is a hell of a lot of fraud. And the manufacturers of herbal supplements have successfully fought against actual testing of the contents of these substances. But this is outright consumer fraud. Even without requiring some kind of proof to back up claims made about results from use, at the very least can't we have the actual product in the bottle?
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