Fill in the Blanks 117-testOnline version 117-test by Farhad Key 1 adhesives small flour rooted acknowledge edifice leavenings staple Descendants either lending in wallboard metaphor manifestation rests of the Maya living in Mexico still sometimes refer to themselves as 'the corn people' . The phrase is not intended as . Rather , it's mean to their abiding dependence on this miraculous grass , the of their diet for almost 9000 years . [ For an American like me , growing up linked to a very different food chain , yet one that is also in corn , not to think of himself as a corn person suggests a failure of imagination or a triumph of capitalism . Or perhaps a little of both . For the great of variety and choice that is an American supermarket on a remarkably narrow biological foundation : corn . It's not merely the feed that the steers and the chickens and the pigs and the turkeys ate ; it's not just the source of the and the oil and the , the glycerides and coloring in the processed foods ; it's not just sweetening the soft drinks or a shine to the magazine cover over by the checkout . ] The supermarket itself - the and joint compound , the linoleum and fiberglass and out of which the building itself has been built - is no measure a of corn .