Corn is our friend, but it has a dark side. Shelf Life wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of, say, an aggressive Niblet. Consider the evidence. First and most disturbing is the hegemony of Big Corn in our grocery stores, an unhealthy state of affairs in which thousands of everyday food products are unnecessarily bulked up with sweet, starchy corn derivatives, especially corn syrup. The overabundance of corn in our diets has been accomplished largely by stealth, and is the result of several agricultural epidemics, chiefly lavish government subsidies for corn crops, the expansion of corporate farming, and the Western appetite for cheap calories. In the global food marketplace, corn is a big fat bully.

The Mordor-like corn industry is bad enough, but once the kernels turn on each other things start to get really nasty. It turns out that tortilla chips killed the corn chip. Tortilla chips are relative newcomers: although nominally a Mexican food, the bagged snacks we know today were first produced in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. Searching for a way to make use of misshapen tortillas rejected from the family’s automated tortilla machine, Rebecca Webb Carranza saw a new way to attract patrons to her family’s El Zerape Mexican delicatessen in LA. She cut the discarded tortillas into triangles, fried them, and sold them for a dime a bag. (Fifty years later, Carranza received the Golden Tortilla Award for her contribution to the Mexican food industry). Until the Seventies, the market was dominated by the corn chip, small curly dippers made from fried corn meal. (interestingly, the key difference between the corn in tortillas and corn chips is that the corn in a tortilla chip has undergone a process known as nixtamalization, which involves processing the raw corn with quicklime). When the tortilla chip spread from California and conquered the continent, its old-school predecessor fell from favour.

For Shelf Life, the message behind these developments is clear: corn ain’t corny. This is a vegetable that doesn’t play fair, won’t go away, and it doesn’t bring out the best in advertisers (back in the day, the Mexican connection to fried corn chips led to ethically dubious ad characters such as the Frito Bandito). In the supermarket, cunning King Corn hides in plain sight (to find out how ubiquitous corn can be, check ingredients lists on packaged items). But we can’t quit the stuff – like most of us, Shelf Life enjoys countless legit corn products, including tortilla chips. Ultimately, we look at the situation this way: let’s hate the sin (the tyranny of corn agribusiness) but love the sinner (corn itself).

Taking it one bag at a time are this week’s expert judges: Stephen Hobson, bon vivant and general manager of the Rivoli restaurant; John Lee, owner of Chippy’s Fish and Chips restaurants; and Leslie Weeks, food stylist for the TVO series Taste Buds, all in Toronto. Space limitations prevent us from evaluating every product in a given category; entries reflect the luck of the draw. Items are blind taste tested and awarded between zero and five stars.

	Brand One Que Pasa Tortilla Chips, made with Organic Blue Corn 454g, $4.99 widely available For more info visit www.quepasafoods.com Stephen: These chips are flatter than flat, and round, like they’ve been steamrolled. They shatter into sharp fragments in the mouth, so my lips might be in danger. No sharp taste though – more like pasteboard. And they smell like the Exxon Valdez. ONE STAR John: Hmmm … lots of oil. These chips might have been fried twice, and after that – because I guess someone was afraid there might not be enough oil in them – brushed with some more of the stuff. The texture is super crispy. TWO STARS Leslie: They’re fine-textured, flat, thin, and crispy to the max. Which sounds good, except for the fact that there isn’t much corn or salt taste. I’ll give Brand One some credit for the crunch. ONE AND A HALF STARS Brand One Total FOUR AND A HALF STARS ****1/2
	Brand Two Neal Bros Organic Blue Corn Tortillas 320g, $2.99 widely available For more info visit www.nealbrothersfoods.com Stephen: Not a bad chip, not bad at all. They look interesting – like handmade Japanese paper pocked with chunks of corn. I’m getting a nice corn afterglow. FOUR STARS John: Good crispy texture, nice super size, the right thickness – take this chip and dip it! I’d get out the guacamole for Brand Two, maybe add some finely chopped peppers for extra kick. FOUR STARS Leslie: My first thought is: they look gnarly! I like these; I can taste the corn and they’re big and ragged and fun to eat. Not too much salt either. THREE AND A HALF STARS Brand Two Total ELEVEN AND A HALF STARS ***********1/2
	Brand Three Garden Of Eatin’ Blue Chips 255g, $3.69 widely available For more info visit http://www.gardenofeatin.com/ Stephen: These chips are big and tasteless, so Brand Three would be good for situations where people shovel in the snacks and don’t pay too much attention, like frat parties. They have a dry, cardboard-like flavour – Brand Three is the Waco taco. ONE STAR John: There are actual pieces of corn in there, but I can’t taste them. These chips are chunky and coarse and dark, and the flavour is a bit like those Korean walnut cakes. We’re a long way from Mexico. ONE STAR Leslie: Yowch – these are so jagged and dry that it almost hurts to eat them; they’re sticking in my throat. Stale corn and not enough salt – there’s no payoff with Brand Three, no reason to keep eating them. ONE STAR Brand Three Total THREE STARS ***
	Brand Four Tostitos Natural Blue Corn Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips 240g, $3.49 widely available For more info visit www.fritolay.com Stephen: Their colour is almost indigo, a kind of tyrian purple, and they smell corn-ish.The texture is crumbly meets mushy, which is where you want to be with tortilla chips. I’m eating a lot of these – corn hooks up with salt and they make it work. FIVE STARS John: Large size, good texture, not too salty – Brand 4 chips break up crisply and go down nicely. However they are on the thin side – you couldn’t use them for heavy dips like chili. FOUR STARS Leslie: For me, these are the only chips that taste like they’ve actually been exposed to heat – they have a toasted flavour. They’re big and a bit delicate, with a clean, corny smell. Brand Four chips are a good way to get the party started. FOUR AND 1!2 STARS Brand Four total THIRTEEN AND A HALF STARS *************1/2

Results: Top-scoring brand Tostitos Organics proved that they are the blue chips with blue-chip status. Canada’s own Neal Bros also gave good snack. Meanwhile, the answer to the question ‘Que Pasa?’ is, unfortunately, not much. Finally, judges speculated that somewhere in the Garden Of Eatin’ is a corn-customized woodchipper and a vat of blue dye.

Off The Menu: Speaking of colour, Shelf Life has always wondered about tortilla chips available in American-flag-hued varieties: is blue corn an authentic strain, or a gimmick? It turns out that blue corn is one of the oldest types of North American maize. The Pueblo tribe in the Southwestern United States was using blue corn at least as far back as 1540, when Spanish explorers discovered the region. Blue corn tends to be floury, and contains about 30% more protein than the average hybrid corn. Many chip enthusiasts feel that it has a lighter flavour than yellow corn. For Shelf Life, it’s all about the salsa. For a link to our archived salsa taste test click here: Salsa tasting