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Corn and Vitamin C
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Corn Allergy, GMOs, and Vitamin C Made from Corn: The Real Story
by Andrew W. Saul
Dangerous true allergic reaction to corn is rare. Sensitivity to corn is fairly common. More people believe they have an allergy to corn than really do. Corn proteins (prolamins, or zeins) contain sequences of amino acids not unlike wheat gluten. If you are having issues, get tested and see. If you skin-test positive to corn, and if you have corn-specific IgE antibodies in your blood, you still might not be truly allergic to corn. Sensitive, yes. . . and that is reason enough to avoid corn as a food and products containing it.
"Corn protein is not a highly allergenic allergen, and reactions rarely occur in response to the very small amounts of allergen that are present in most foods. That is the reason why corn is used so extensively - it is considered to be one of the food derivatives that is usually safe and least likely to cause an adverse reaction in the greatest number of consumers." (Janice Vickerstaff Joneja, Ph.D., RD,)
But there is no corn whatsoever in vitamin C made from corn. Ready to dispute that? Well, you can relax. This won't hurt a bit.
Pure ascorbic acid, used in most vitamin C and multivitamin supplements, is C6H8O6, a small molecule that has nothing to do whatsoever with the giant proteins that some people are allergic to. When vitamin C is manufactured, all those big food molecules are long gone. Big molecules? How big? Well, for example, corn's zein proteins have molecular weights of between 19,000 and 22,000. Ascorbic acid's molecular weight is 176. Corn proteins are well over 100 times larger than vitamin C molecules. They are easily processed out. Pure ascorbic acid, even AA made from corn, has those giants long gone.
And yes, they know how to do this in China. Indeed, in the late 1960s, the Chinese invented and developed the most advanced, and inexpensive, way to manufacture vitamin C. (Schaechter M [ed]. Encyclopedia of Microbiology, Academic Press. 3rd edition 2009, page 558.)
If you took a particular supplement and had a problem with it, I will not deny your experience. Read labels and switch brands: there are plenty to choose from. And no, I do not make brand recommendations, not ever.
But actually you may be sensitive to tableting ingredients, excipients and fillers. With vitamin C, you can avoid the entire issue by take pure ascorbic acid or sodium ascorbate powder. If it is pure, it can still be made from corn originally, because there is no corn or corn proteins in C6H8O6. None at all.
Should your next concern be about GMO corn, consider this: Even if the ascorbic acid molecule comes from GMOs, which I disapprove of, it is still molecularly OK. You cannot genetically modify carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen atoms. And, you cannot genetically modify the physics of the bonds between them. "Genetic" modification is about genes. Genes are enormous. They are made up of many, many DNA molecules, and DNA molecules are themselves huge. All of these are vastly larger than vitamin C. If you stretched it out, your DNA is nearly as tall as you are. Just try doing that with a vitamin C molecule.
There are no GMO factors in C6H8O6. None.
Copyright C
2018 Andrew W. Saul.
Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
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Andrew W. Saul
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