Our son is hypersensitive to corn and corn derivatives. He is tutored at home by the school due to his reactions to inhaled corn products, ie:shampoo, glues, paints, paste, perfumes, detergents, markers, chalk, crayon adhesive(our son helped spark the creative department at Crayola to make the twistable crayons) glues on stamps and stickers, envelopes, make up, medicated powders and on and on. Creating our lives in a bubble in our house. Even around our backyard we need to be careful with what our neighbors are doing. A few weeks ago our neighbor was cutting sheet rock. The glue is made by corn dextrose, our son had to come in. The rest of the week, when we heard the saw we needed to shut all the windows and hope that it didn’t get in our house all ready.
As for eating, well, we have been completely corn free for 4 years. It has been difficult, there is little to know products to purchase in the store that he can eat. Fruits and veggies, the fresh kind, are coated with corn wax. It doesn’t say corn wax, instead it says Vegetable wax for freshness, or something else. Needless to say, how ever they want to say it, it is corn. During the fall we collect as many apples from the orchard near our house as possible to take us as far into the winter as we can, that same farm has peaches, pears, nectarines, and plums. Each new season we need to stock up with fresh fruit. We grow our own garden with out fertilizers, herbacides, or any bug repellent. This is very difficult but we have to, all those products actually contain corn, even the organic ones. So organic foods at the stores, specifically brocolli for some reason affects our son. Through tons of research and several phone calls I found out that I couldn’t purchase organic foods either. We all have to remember that corn is organic. This enables it to move through every avenue and affect all of us that will be affected. We all know about ethanol in the gas, our son has to be in our car with us so we have to jump out quickly, gas up, wipe off and hope we don’t bring too much into the car when we return. If we do then we need to open up the car and air out, lots of fun mid winter (we live in New York, only gets below zero)
I have had all the challenges of creating food for a small child, a child that watches television and sees all the commercials for Happy meals, Tacos and so on. I now make pizza cheese needs to be imported or else it has corn in it! tacos, ravioli, pierogies, cakes, cookies, donuts, meatballs, alfredo sauce, gravies, tomato sauce, ketchup, mustard, pickles, and so much more. Anything and everything that may make a 2-6 year olds palate happy I have to create it.
Our boys are amazingly healthy because their whole lives they had no processed foods, preservatives, poisons. Their doctors are wowed by their muscle to fat ratio, their growth each year being above average, their health is so much better then the average American, they hardly get sick. Speaking of sick, we have to have our medications over the counter and prescription, made by a compounding pharmacy to avoid the corn in the pills, liquids, and tablets.
Best of luck to all who are trying to avoid corn. Success is slow and eye opening.

Nicole rdj