Malnourished: Cultural Ignorance Paved the Way for Pellagra (original) (raw)

Gravy, 2016

Abstract

Ancient farmers domesticated corn, or maize, about 9,000 years ago in the Rio Balsas River region of present-day Mexico. From there, dried kernels made their way along ancient trade routes to other locales in Mesoamerica, Central America, and eventually North America. Corn was easy to grow and produced a high yield. Eventually, entire communities flourished alongside maize crops. Corn traveled to Europe in the post-Columbus world and spread across the continent. When early European colonists arrived in North America, Native peoples, especially the Iroquois, taught them how to farm and prepare corn. An essential step in the preparation of corn is nixtamalization, which liberates the chemical compounds niacin and tryptophan and makes them bioavailable. While we do not know exactly when ancient Mesoamericans developed this method, the earliest culinary equipment associated with the process dates to approximately 3,200 years ago. Real and long-lasting problems arose when corn became a commodity crop as early as the 1700s in Europe. In the nineteenth-century rural South, sharecroppers grew it, sold it, ate it, and became sick—all because of a lost recipe.

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