https://thenewgastronome.com/polenta-va ... onization/Polenta, the seemingly innocent Italian dish of ‘cocina povere’ fame, was the sole source of nutrition for many poor, Italian labourers in the 16th-20th centuries, causing an epidemic of niacin-deficiency. This wasn’t always the case. Corn didn’t arrive in Europe until Columbus carried with him kernels of maize from the “New World” to Spain on his return voyage in 1493.
Fast-growing and high-yielding, corn showed great potential to landlords for a specific purpose: Feeding the peasant population that laboured in the fields. Landowners cleared forests, vineyards, and pastures across northern Italy to make room for its monocultural production. Wheat, which sold at double the price of maize, was reserved for wealthier populations. Soon, Italian peasants ate a diet made up almost exclusively of maize in the form of polenta. While polenta fed the population much more cost-efficiently than other grains, it didn’t provide adequate nutrients to stave off disease. Maize, a product that long sustained native populations of the Americas, was brought back to Europe without the process which makes it a nutritionally-rich staple: nixtamalization.
For thousands of years, native populations of Mesoamerica practised the culinary tradition called nixtamalization. A kernel of corn soaked in a bath of wood ash or lime loses its tough exterior. The result is a softer, sweeter, and more nutritious product. Maize, and its culinary process, is considered deeply sacred in most Mesoamerican cultures. In the sacred book of the Quiche, the Popol Vuh, the origin of man is described in relation to the gift of corn from the gods.
Not only is maize a sacred ingredient, but its processing is a necessary and sanctified step. The Aztecs believed that the god of corn, Centeotl, taught them the process of nixtamalization “as a secret that benefitted them at the expense of their enemies.” Mesoamerican cultures discovered the magic of nixtamalization many millennia before settlers arrived on their lands. There’s archaeological evidence of nixtamalization in Guatemala as far back as 1500 BCE. Native people understood the importance of nixtamalization as, without it, there would have been significant malnutrition. Native peoples not only created the technique which makes maize a nutritious food, but they also learned to pair it with other food items, such as beans, which create a full protein as a meal.
The ingenuity of nixtamalization allowed the native peoples of Mesoamerica to live healthy and prosperous lives for thousands of years before colonizers ever set foot in the Americas.
Joseph Smith could not have known how important corn was to people in pre-Colombian America. And that is why the Book of Mormon is completely silent on this essential aspect of Native American life.
Imagine if Christ in the Americas had some parable mentioning the sacred life-giving process that transformed corn and staved off disease. Wouldn’t that be something, a bullseye and good evidence of authenticity.
Instead, the Book of Mormon spends page after page detailing the growing of wine grapes in vineyards…
