Despite growing acres of it, my grandmother would never put corn on the dinner table except maybe as cornbread. Corn was something you fed to the livestock to get them fat. Just something to think about.
Yes. Low in protein, and the profile is poor.
They probably only grew common yellow dent corn, a thick-hulled high starch grain of lower sugar content which is suitable for livestock but not suitable as “corn on the cob” table fare, nor for popcorn.
Thin-hulled sweet corn with its high sugar content is suitable for the table- its kernels shrivel up like raisins when dried, whereas dent corn barely shrivels. Dent corn holds its smooth shape except for a unique tiny dent on the exposed, flattened end of the kernel.
Flint corn, with rounded ends and a thick hard hull, is good for corn meal and decoration and comes in an array of colors. Red, black, white and yellow popcorn, with a rounded tear shape and a thin hull and high moisture content, doesn’t shrivel at all.
If you grow more than one kind of corn, though, you risk cross pollination ruining the seed for next year, so it’s easier to just grow the most profitable dent corn, which is probably why they didn’t have sweet corn for dinner.