abstract
- © 2015 AACC International, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Mesoamerica is the cradle of corn and its wide array of nixtamalized foods. Corn developed from teosintle, and its cultivation was greatly responsible for transforming indigenous people into progressive farmers. In order to improve its eating qualities and nutritional value, the Indians cooked corn kernels with a leachate of wood ashes or lime. The cooked corn kernels were tender and easier to mill into a dough that was the backbone for production of an ample array of foods. Notably, nixtamalization enhanced the nutritional profile of the foods, especially in terms of supplying the needed calcium that was scarce in their diets. Modern nixtamalized products are industrially manufactured following the same procedures used by the Aztecs but with high-output equipment. Today, tortillas and related products are produced from either fresh masa or dry masa flour (DMF). The technology of DMF production was developed by Mexican entrepreneurs in the middle of the twentieth century and soon became the preferred technology for adoption of nixtamalized products in developed countries. The advantage of using DMF is that it readily yields wet masa after a few minutes of blending with water and thus expedites the manufacturing of finished products. The most relevant nixtamalized product has been the tortilla, which is still the single most-consumed food among Mexicans. The production of masa and tortillas originated the second-most-popular snack foods consumed nowadays: fried corn and tortilla chips. An exchange of corn and wheat occurred after Columbus discovered America in 1492 and the conquistador Cortes subjugated the Aztecs in 1521. Mexican cuisine soon adopted wheat and developed wheat tortillas, which were preferred by the Spaniards. Their industrial production exploded when North Americans adopted and massively produced wheat tortillas during the second part of the past century. Today, both corn in the form of tortillas and related snacks and wheat flour tortillas are manufactured and sold all over the world.