Corn

[kate]

I'm having a tough week with my daughter with issues which could just be behavioral or could be a mild reaction. She's been having her normal diet other than that she's been having a small amount of sugar free cornflakes everyday for the last 3 days as a morning snack (ingredients = maize, rice malt, salt). Could there be a connection? Is there fructose in corn/maize? Or rice malt? Hope not as they've been a real novalty for her.

[colormist]

Malt can sometimes be an issue. I've had problems with malt in the past. Did some googling and found this wiki article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_rice_syrup

All those ingredients seem to be derived from glucose. It is a possibility that the rice malt is not of medical-grade and thus contaminated with another syrup made in the same factory.

I'm really trying to objectively think through this, but all I want to do is to eat some corn flakes again.

Are you sure she's not possibly sneaking any other food from a friend, family, or by herself?

The other thing you could do would be to skip the cornflakes for a week and see if she's still having an issue.

[charlie]

Kate, Megs used to react to sugar free cornflakes, probably the same make you are trying, I think we got them in Waitrose. I think corn can be an issue as I found the gluten free corn pasta wasn't good for her either.

The other problem is that the same company makes alot of cereals with sugar in them so there could be a risk of contamination there too.

Anything too with the word malt used to make me concerned as it tends to imply a sweeter compound, and as it is made from brown rice likelier to be higher in sugars.

OK so had a quick scoot round nutrition data and finelli database and neither list fructose or sucrose so either the rice malt the issue or as I suspect with Megs it is the starch.

[kate]

Ahhh, it might be the starch as potato starch is definitely an issue. But not potatoes for some reason. Thanks for your help guys. I think we may give them a miss for a few days like you suggest Colormist and see what happens. Her behavior has been off and she's woken up from her nap drenched in sweat the last 3 days. I'll see if that stops without them. It could of course just be that she's getting a bug. It's such a frustrating journey of endless trial and error isn't it...

[fred]

I don't see how anything with corn in it can be sugar free. When I look up corn on Nutrition Data, 100 gm of sweet yellow corn contains 3.2 gm of sugar broken down as follows:

Sugars3.2g

Sucrose1730mg
Glucose670mg
Fructose430mg
Lactose0.0mg
Maltose330mg
Galactose0.0mg

For someone who has a daily fructose tolerance of 100 or so mg. this is a lot of bad sugar.

[charlie]

Well, yes I was surprised on my search it didn't list any, the finelli one which seems to be fairly on a par with nutrition data list sugar free cornflakes and says no sugars, but that doesn't seem right at all, but very high starch.

Is the corn used the same as sweetcorn, it must be corn off the cob but does it lose sugar as it dries out, you've got me thinking...............

Its strange how little you know about food until something gets you thinking. Sweetcorn is a different variety to the grain maize:
Sweet corn (Zea mays convar. saccharata var. rugosa;[1] also called sugar corn and pole corn) is a variety of maize with a high sugar content. Sweet corn is the result of a naturally occurring recessive mutation in the genes which control conversion of sugar to starch inside the endosperm of the corn kernel. Unlike field corn varieties, which are harvested when the kernels are dry and mature (dent stage), sweet corn is picked when immature (milk stage) and prepared and eaten as a vegetable, rather than a grain. Since the process of maturation involves converting sugar to starch, sweet corn stores poorly and must be eaten fresh, canned, or frozen, before the kernels become tough and starchy.
So yes, maybe the sugar has already turned to starch by the time it is used for grain.

[lucky]

This got me thinking...

My son doesn't tolerate corn (as in corn on the cobb), but seems to tolerate Cheetos Puffs (cheesy puffs -made with cornmeal- *does contain corn maltodextrin). So, is cornmeal different? Or is there just less of the 'corn' per volume (eaten) in the puff product?

And then how does popcorn (air popped and seasoned with butter/salt) factor into this? Is it sweet and problematic to those with HFI?

Any thoughts on this is very much appreciated. Thanks

[kate]

My daughter doesn't do sweetcorn either. But I guess cornflakes should really be called maizeflakes. I wonder what the databases say about "maize'?...

[charlie]

I think it must depend on the make of plant used, but as far as I can see maize doesn't list any sugars as maize starch, but maize kernels have a little bit of sugar in them.

Popcorn: www.fineli.fi/food.php?foodid=1552&lang=en

Sweetcorn info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_corn

Maize: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize

There that should keep you all busy for a few hours............ Interesting subject though, never realised there was so much to corn, but the high starch maybe explains why Meg can't have it if she does have the starch tolerance problem I think she has.

[denverjay]

I have always had a bad reaction to cornflakes even though there does not appear to be any ingredients which would pose a huge problem.

I am okay with popcorn with salt and butter.

[fred]

The reason most of us have trouble with Cornflakes is that they contain quite a bit of sugar plus HFCS.

Cornflakes were accidentally invented in 1894 by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in Michigan.

Currently the main ingredients are:
Milled Corn, Sugar, Malt, High Fructose Corn Syrup

There is a very interesting one page article about them at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_flakes

Fred