One note that usually gets missed and is an important note: What most people think of with corn (soft sweet kernels) is actually a fairly recent thing, and is only a small fraction of corn grown and used. Called "sweetcorn" The vast majority of corn grown is hard and starchy. And is harvested well after the crop has died and let dry out in the field. "Field corn" or "yellow #2 corn/maize" is what is overwhelming grown and used in everything from cereal to animal feed. And popcorn is a seperate small fraction of corn in its own group.
Yellow corn is actually Dent Corn. It was developed in the late 1800s. When it's called yellow #2 it's more of a grade than a name. Yellow #1 is the same thing just higher quality. Most Dent corn is sold as Yellow #2 as that is the largest market. Before Reid, the breeder of Dent Corn, developed the first Dent corn most corn grown was red. Reid bred a red variety with various Flint and Flour varieties to produce Dent corn. It just happened to be yellow. Soon after hybridization was developed and Dent Corn proved to work the best in this system. So today nearly all corn grown is related to what James L. Reid developed.
yes! I remember until the 2010s in India, they had a different type of corn than I was used to in the United States. Then all of a sudden, every vendor replaced that corn with sweetcorn. Also, big on the animal feed bit. It takes a lot of water to create the field corn, and that corn is also used for ethanol creation
I absolutely love talking about how AMAZING the Indigenous New World peoples were at domesticating crazy and seemingly terrible plants - they turned a poisonous tiny root into basically the king if all single foods - the potato! Their ingenuity was incredible, while the mesoamericans made corn (and more I'm sure!) the Andes were full of incredible potatoes and other plants on terraces - multigenerational projects designed to gradually adapt crops to different altitudes. Then we have water and irrigation system of the Huari/Wari too!
Also I believe pumpkins too (my theory) where I live here on Yucatan, at the southeast of Mexico, there are some small green pumpkins, while on the US and Canada there are the classic big orange pumpkins, it looks to me like selective breeding, but I have no real info. If someone knows I'd love to hear.
@@maksphoto78 You think they rocked up in Mexico and the next day had corn? They survived for generations on pre-existing foods they could hunt and gather before they got even close to successfully domesticating anything Domesticating foods made things easier and allowed denser populations to arise in complex societies, but it was never a given How do you think ancient peoples existed before agriculture? They didn't starve to death or we wouldn't exist
He should talk about how Gruma is taking over traditional nixtamal tortilla makers in Mexico. The traditional method isn’t legal in most parts of Texas. Guess who has that market? Maseca, which is owned by Gruma. The restaurant supply stores there has a whole aisle dedicated to Maseca. In California they have like a pallet sized area for it. There’s a ton of traditional tortillerias in California still, since Gruma doesn’t have a hold of the market
@@marcr1333 Could you provide a source for the claim that the traditional method is illegal in most parts of Texas? I wasn't able to find anything on that when I searched.
Back in my botany classes in college, I made the joke "there is nothing we can do to corn that corn wouldn't do to itself given the opportunity." At some point in its post domestication evolution, it randomly doubled its genome. Super sweet corn was invented by irradiating the seeds. Corn is WEIRD.
And on top of that, corn belongs to a evolutionary lineage of plants that opted for a more rare but efficient photosynthetic process that will make them outlast other plants in less friendly environments in both temperature and sunlight. And people are genetically experimenting rice to adopt that kind of photosynthesis to greatly reduce water and soil needs, which is something that can't be done through cross-breeding, the OG genetic engineering method of antiquity.
Another important factor was likely the co-domestication of beans. Growing the two plants together may be another reason for selecting teosinte/corn with larger stalks - the corn stalks may have initially been used as scaffolding for the bean vines to grow on. Growing corn and beans together also keeps the soil healthier, as the bacteria in the root nodules of the legumes perform nitrogen fixation. And the combination of corn and beans also provides all of the amino acids necessary for a healthy diet.
@@dwwolf4636Source: my ass and cheeks. Modern humans eat diets extremely laden with processed red meat and dairy, and while it's not the healthiest source of protein; it IS without argument protein. If you want to proselytize about the benefits of cutting back fat and carbs then replacing them with more protein in your diet, sure, have fun with that; but false fear-mongering like "most humans don't get enough protein!" is unnecessary and undermines your "““cause””". 😂
2:45. They originally gave the kernels to their domesticated birds as a food, kept the stalk for themselves, after a few thousand years of cultivating for animal feed, someone got desperate and tried to make it into a bread. Many of the grains we now use were originally only fit for Cattle, Horses, or Fowl.
So much of what we consider haute cuisine is actually poor people food made good. Like, half of French cooking is just grabbing whatever protein is nearby (snails, frog legs, etc.), throwing whatever seasonings you have handy on it to make it somewhat edible, and calling it dinner. Nobody with a choice does that to start with. That's something that starving peasants did because they were starving and then someone called it "cultural" and so it became fancy.
The author forgot all about the field corn that can be turned into ethanol and the by product of ethanol is DDG's ( dried distillers grain) which is used for animal feed.. In my town there an ethanol plant that produces both fuel and tons of DDG's every day , ship most of DDG's in container units overseas.
I have read that 95% of the "ear corn" grown in America today is genetically modified, which is why I will ONLY purchase "certified organic corn" - even though I KNOW that doesn't mean anything! At least I'm trying... 🙁
@@dixietenbroeck8717 all grains eaten are "genetically modified" but not by modifying the actual genes, but by crossbreeding plants and continuing with the ones who gained the desired traits.
More kernals = more seeds more seeds = more plants More plants = extra seeds Extra seeds = the extras can be eaten Being eaten = new selective focus for breeding
The invention of Nixtamalization is also easy to guess: You want corn soup, but your pot is made of wood and you don't want to make a new pot every time after cooking. So instead of putting the wooden pot over the fire you put stones in the fire to heat them. Then you take the hot (and usually ashy) stones and throw them in the pot to heat the soup.
@@Samu2010lolcats ooohhh actually there is a difference cause if it, the oldest method for boiling was using boiling stones, stones placed in wood fires till they were hot then transfered to the dish of water, this introduced ash hut also the stones used often were lime stone which would be heated and cause the formation of slaked lime when used in this way, thats actually where the calcium hydroxide comes from, standard wood ash creates potassium hydroxide or lye, both can be used in nixtamalisation so there is a bit more there but it's all easily seen from the tech and geography of the times
In a program about corn, the presenter asked the scientist can you pop teosinte ? The scientist said I dont know, so they tried and yes teosinte does pop and then you can eat it. So if they ate the juice, plonked the dry seeds on the fire and they popped and some one ate it?
That makes sense. Popcorn has the hardest hull of any of the modern variations of corn. The only thing I can think of that kept that from being the pre-contact technique being it was probably pretty destructive to the pottery. :-)
@@ernestsmith3581 I get that it was a joke but that made me wanna ask more questions. Like did humans just set a thin granite rock on top of the fire with teosinte seeds on top of it. Anything is possible when given thousands of years and the fact that all effort went toward improving the life of yourself, your family, and maybe 100 or so tribe members
@@Sumanitu I would think roasting the early Zea cultivar seeds to make them pop, giving access to the starch, would be just as likely a reason to begin cultivating the plant as chewing the stems for a sweet juice. And I was being silly - popping corn in a paper bag happens thousands of times per day on this planet, so I doubt seriously a properly vented fired clay pot would break from a kernel strike. Even if they did, enclosing the seed in a large green leaf pouch tied at top would work just fine.
Thanks, Hanna Young for pointing this out. It really does make sense to eat the seeds if you have an excess (and what gardener doesn't save too many seed?). I am not aware of any grass seed that cannot be eaten (but don't take my word for it, there may be some!), and in a survival situation would choose grains over unknown herbs.
@@ernestsmith3581 Pre white people popcorn was made on hot flat rocks, not in pots. So toss some branches of teosinte on the fire for fuel, the seed husk hits the hot rocks and pops and why not eat them? How you seen the self fertilising's giant corn? That is very interesting, when it comes to corn.
The treated corn you speak of is also known as "Hominy" here in the US South, and when dried and ground, is known as 'Grits.' I have eaten the Hominy out of a can, Toasted as a snack called "CornNuts" by brand name, and mostly as grits. Butter and Salt, with my scrambled eggs, or as part of the dish(es) known as 'Shrimp Gits.' Mmmm, Yummy!
Grits is one of the most important foods in American history. It comes from Southern whites learning from natives instead of ignoring them. It kept both from starving.
I’m surprised by just how many cultures in the americas have some kind of cooking that involves wood ash. Where I live, in the Shuswap region of BC, many different kinds of plant roots where cooked by being boiled in an alkaline solution or steamed (plants like Wild Sarsaparilla and False Solomons-Seal)
Not just the Americas. Bagels and pretzels are dipped or boiled in a lye solution, and ramen has some sort of alkaline liquid mixed in (though I'm not sure if that last one would have been made from wood ash, specifically).
If you are cooking over a wooden fire, it would not be uncommon to get wood ash in the stew Edit: I believe I saw that in an Adam Ragusea video, I am no infinite fountain of knowledge, I couldn't tell you more than that
@@Alchoholics_Anonymous I've also heard it theorized that some of these processes might have been discovered by people mixing wood ash into their grain when they stored it to keep bugs out. If a little water got in there, it would've formed some sort of lye solution soaking the grain. No clue if it's true, but it's a cool idea.
I can solve the conundrum about why the focus switched The more seeds the teosinte had the more plants could be planted, so that became a breeding point, then there was eventually enough extra that people were like hey maybe we can eat it. Fron there i think it all makes sense
The evolution of the avocado is even crazier, this type of fruit developed due to a symbiosis with giant mammals such as ground sloths and mastodons from Central and South America, however they became extinct a few thousand years ago, which meant that the plant did'nt have a way to spread its seeds, without human intervention, it is possible that it too would have become extinct.
@@LambentLark I'm weird, most people that don't like guacamole don't like avocados. I do, I especially like avocado oil for cooking and making condiments/dressings. 🤔🤓🍻
I thought “nixtamal” was “neesh-tamal”- comes from Nahuatl (the Aztec language) for “ash dough” (since wood ash is alkaline)- X’s were put into words because Spanish colonizers didn’t know how to write for glottal stops and foreign sounds.
I remember when the show Good Eats did an episode on corn, they said the Mesoamericans grew two grasses near each other because they grew better that way. The two grasses eventually cross-pollinated and created an early version of corn.
@@mawlinzebra actually they believe wolves started by following nomads as lone wolfs and eating the scraps of things we killed. Eventually humans started to feel comfortable around the wolves and would feed them instead of watch them from a distance. Making them part of our pack. Just like how pigs change when domesticated so did they
@@mawlinzebra Humans don't come from humans. They share a common ancestor. The common ancestor between dogs today and wolves today was a wolf, just as the common ancestor between your and your next door neighbor was also a human. Dogs and wolves are, strictly speaking, the same species still. They just don't ever breed together without human intervention.
@@mawlinzebra dogs are a subspecies of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) called Canis lupus familiaris. So in some sense they didn't come from wolves, but rather they ARE wolves.
You didn’t explain how nixtamalisation was discovered: the most ancient way of processing maize is by grinding it on limestone molcajetes or metates, with a little bit of water. The lime would dissolve in the water and activate the maize flour. Over time, soaking and boiling in lime was developed to make the process more consistent.
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican to the other: 'You cannot eat that plant called teosinte'. Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just start a 9 thousand year-long process of genetic modification to create a whole new plant species that is edible.' First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But even then, you cannot make a regular diet of the new plant species because it will cause a sickness called pellagra since it would not contain niacinamide.' Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just invent an alkaline chemical process called nixtamalization and start an oral tradition that will extend thousands of years in the future to pass along instructions of how to make the then genetically modified plant species edible.' First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But I am hungry now.'
The next chapter in the story of corn may come as a result of a variety found in the remote mountains of Mexico that fixes its' own nitrogen with the help of a symbiotic slime. Combining the traits of that variety with commercially farmed varieties would eliminate the need for a lot of fertilizer.
What's interesting is a split must have happened at some point amongst north american and south american/mexican farmers. One group started cultivating the slime variety to increase nitrogen while the other group started growing corn with legumes to fix nitrogen into the surrounding soil. Even with the slime though there is still the need for a little fertilizer, and it looks like they occasionally grow beans in the cornfields as an alternative.
Holy crap, as soon as I saw the hominy corn in this video it brought me back to both my grandma's cooking. It's so awesome to know that both of them learned those techniques for making corn tortillas and menudo. For context: my dad's mom is native American and my moms mom is native mexican
Re: the drawing used at 06:03, fun fact: those little scrolls coming out of the person’s mouth are the way Nahuatl people would represent singing. I just think that’s neat!
Probably the subject of a whole other video, but another reason corn became popular is it is the host for an edible and delicious fungus called Corn Smut, or huitlacoche in native Mexican Nahuatl. It does decrease the overall yield for the infected field, but farmers more than make up for it by selling the immature fungal galls to restaurants. They taste like a sweeter version of a truffle and provide the essential nutrients that un-nixtimalized corn does not.
I had huitlacoche tacos in Mexico on the Yucatan Caribbean coast. Perhaps the waiter was afraid to tell a gringo what it really is; he said it was black coral! Weird at first bite but tasty. I heard there's a place in Detroit that serves them. I'm in the burbs but will have to check it out.
I remember learning about this somewhere else and I'm still wondering which brave soul was the first to try eating the weird-looking fungus growing on their corn. Also, "Corn Smut" sounds more like a very niche genre of p0rn0gr@phy (cornography, you might say) than the name of a food lol.
@@Praisethesunson Not off the plant, which is no doubt the reason for the request you're replying to. They are utterly inedible without a serious amount of processing.
“To this day, corn is among the least nutritious staple crops” Me, elbow deep in a family sized bag of skinny pop right now: “BUT THE INTERNET TOLD ME ITS A GOOD SOURCE OF FIBER 😭”
It's labeled as good for you because it's not bad for you... because it's not anything for you at all. You're eating popcorn to satisfy your urge to taste stuff. Try eating foods with calories when you do work that requires calories.
it seems that while nixtamalization did not spread to Europe, it did to China, corn has been a staple food in some regions and they do use alkaline solutions in the preparation process. If possible, please make a follow-up video about it
I think pawpaws are the best candidate. It's cold hardy but it's a tropical fruit fruit somehow. Not alot of breeding has been done on it. I bet if people tried you could get something like a banana that grows in cold climates
@@hawks9142 pawpaws are native to Kansas, but they are becoming more and more rare. They really are edible, and there was a family on my paper route about 30 years ago that would send me some that they grew, for my father to eat. I refused to try them because to me at the time they looked too much like the part of a man that determines gender.
@@justinweatherford8129 haha well of you ever get over your fear they are a really good fruit. Just alot of work that can be done, Smaller seeds and longer shelf life is what I think needs to be done before it could be commercially viable
@@hawks9142 Are paw paws also maypops? We have maypops in Alabama, but you have to go out in the woods yourself to get them. I want them genetically altered so they can be sold in stores. I'm tired of fighting mosquitoes and possums and running into snakes while I'm looking for maypops. Last time there was lagerhead turtle, literally guarding the patch. Or maybe he just stopped for a rest on his way to the river. Either way, I took off running the other way, that thing was bigger than my dog and I didn't feel like having my arm snapped off.
The fact that corn is in practically everything makes it really difficult for those who can’t have corn (allergic)! Seriously, the corn people can retire.. they’ve done their job for several lifetimes!!
Maize is the actual specific name for the corn native to the Americas that this video talks about. The word "corn" is a generic English (ie. British Isles English) term for almost any form of grain. Wheat, barley, oats, etc can all considered corn according to the original word's meaning.
This is just a guess, but I'd think that it started growing into cobs once humans managing the growing plants and consuming the stalks meant that there was a suddenly larger incentive to produce a lot more seeds, and the shift into growing the plant specifically for its seeds came after a sudden mutation thinned out the glume.
The thing about the teosinte juices makes sense for the "why domesticate it in the first place" question - there's a whole bunch of things that are just so bad originally one wonders who and why would have ever started trying to make it better. Watermelons? I wonder how we came from a small unpleasant thing with barely any red parts to the monsters we eat nowadays.
Some researchers believe ancient Mesoamericans started cultivating teosinte cause they made popcorn out of it. It makes sense since they also cultivated and ate amaranth the same way.
Not really surprising. It involves basically soaking the kernels in basically low-level cleaning agent (limewater can be used as disinfectant). In my country, rice is our staple and corn is just a snack...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 wood ash is what has been traditionally used by native Americans for nixtamalization. Natural nonGMO nixtamalized corn is much more nutritious than rice…
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican to the other: 'You cannot eat that plant called teosinte'. Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just start a 9 thousand year-long process of genetic modification to create a whole new plant species that is edible.' First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But even then, you cannot make a regular diet of the new plant species because it will cause a sickness called pellagra since it would not contain niacinamide.' Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just invent an alkaline chemical process called nixtamalization and start an oral tradition that will extend thousands of years in the future to pass along instructions of how to make the then genetically modified plant species edible.' First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But I am hungry now.'
I'm amazed you're able to say the terms "corn wars" and "corn truce" with a straight face. Seems like as of now what can only be called cornology is still ongoing.
Between rice, wheat and corn, most of modern human's diets consist of heavily mutated grasses. Then realize that most of what we consider our leafy greens are actually the same plant selectively mutated into different versions to favor different parts. We've also cross-bred most natural fruit to get fruit more appealing to us. Same thing with roots and tubers. All before the panic over GMO's ever caught hold.
It's absolutely crazy how many things contain corn/corn-based ingredients! After nearly 30 years of suffering from quite bad stomach pains, we finally figured out that I was allergic to corn. Now, I read every ingredient list before I buy something. Corn starch, corn flour, corn syrup, E1412, there are so many different things I have to look out for. Seems I will never be able to have those incredible Mexican taco's. As always, thank you for the great science, Scishow!
@@aethylwulfeiii6502 It's way too expensive out here to do that... I've learnt to live around it. Life is too short to not enjoy good food, and you can make a lot of good food without anything corn!
I grow Hopi Blue Corn near its ancestral homeland in Northern Arizona. This variety is said to be over 1200 years old, and is much more like modern sweet corn (dent corn) than many of the flour corn varieties grown in the Eastern US. The Hopi people do not claim to have domesticated this corn, but that it was brought to them by other worldly beings. It has a profoundly deep root system (upwards of 5 feet deep) and was grown on the arid mesas of the southwest entirely grown by rain. It was typically grown alongside squash and beans in a practice known as "The Three Sisters". The squash, with their broad leaves and long vines, would shade the ground from the intense heat, slowing water evaporation, and the legumes (beans) were used to fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, thus making a sustainable agricultural model for arid farming practices. The drought tolerance of Hopi Blue Corn is incomparable to modern corn, and is ultra rich is B vitamins and 40% higher in protein. This is, of course, to no avail without nixtamalization, which can be done with either potassium hydroxide (wood ash/lye), or calcium hydroxide (quicklime/pickling lime). To nixtamalize, simmer the corn kernels in the alkali solution for around 30 minutes, remove from heat, let sit for around 24 hours. Strain (careful, lye is caustic), and rinse thoroughly to remove the alkali. You then need to remove the germ (outer shell of the kernel) by crushing the kernels in your hands in a bowl of clean water. If the nixtamalization was done properly, the germ should easily seperate and float to the top of the water which can then be strained or poured off. A little bit of germ leftover is OK. You can use the fresh nixtamale (wet) as hominy, or can easily grind it into a dough for tortillas. This is how you make authentic tortillas: there is no other way around it. You can also dry the ground nixtamale and further reduce it to a dry flour for long term storage.
There were no coincidences, just a man that saw something hard to eat and say "I'm going to find the way to eat you." One of the reason why people ate Eels, Blowfish or Onions.
You get hominy when you soak your corn in lye water. It's not just used for masa but is good on it's own as a vegetable. You can find it in cans in the supermarket or in bags in stores with a higher Mexican population. I've seen mothers give hominy from the bags to their toddlers like other mothers give dry cereals. It works. The little kids love it. I like it cooked with ham (usually left over from a holiday). Grits are made from hominy that has been dried and ground. Cook those bits of corn and you have a delicious dish for breakfast. Huzzah Sci Show and Huzzah to corn!
It's really quite interesting and I wonder what more plants are out there that could change drastically but we just don't think about them because nobody is really doing anything with them.
Idk about wood ash but my parents who grew up in mexican villages would put cal in the corn as it’s being boiled. Cal is just calcium hydroxide. Wish you could have covered this!
It is my understanding that teosinte can be eaten... as popcorn. So while the yummy sugar juices might have been a more dominant factor, they were probably popping teosinte along with it from the beginning and so that aspect made sense to improve just like every other.
How did they even think to process corn in that way without modern chemistry knowledge? It always amazes me the inventiveness and leaps humankind suddenly makes.
remember when greeks and romans were counting with letters, the people making maize already mapped the cosmos and created a calendar with the use of real numbers and zero. with zero you can count into the trillions, try doing that with letters : P
I can just see it now. Mesoamericans in 5000 BCE worked diligently in their genetic laboratories to perform "those few genetic changes' in teosinte that changed it into corn. Then, they handed this corn over to the lab next door, where nixtamalization was being invented in their volumetric flasks, crucibles, and bunsen burners. They got the ash from burning the sacrifices to the Gods, because, why not! And so this was how corn tortillas were created for you and me to enjoy! Now, we just need them to invent tomatoes and peppers for the salsa, which isn't yet a thing...
Pellagra; There is a vid on that. In the southern US industry was taking the niacin from corn and selling what remained to the poverty stricken, resulting in a pellagra epidemic. This is how industry still rolls today, taking what they want from a thing and selling the rest for other purposes, i.e., sugar from corn for syrup and the remaining mash to pet food. I do wonder why the ingredients of a jar of Jiff PB., (it's first industrial maker), lists veggie oil. Are they taking the peanut oil and selling it to fast food fryers? Industry telling me the whys and wherefores is hardly trustworthy. You got anything on it?
For example, powdered sugar. I have to buy organic powered sugar because it uses tapioca starch instead of corn starch. It's not just sugar ground up real fine. I have to make my own baking powder substitute with baking soda and cream of tartar, because, you guessed it, corn starch.
Same here. Grocery shopping sucks because it's in almost everything, at least in the US. It's also one of, if not the most highly genteelly modified foods. I didn't even know about baking powder but I don't bake much either.
As someone with a corn sensitivity.... I FEEL that corn making up "20% of all nutrition." Makes it nearly imposible for me to find something to eat lol.
Ah... I remember the Corn Wars. Taters, wheat, rice, and beans- The four rations lived together in hominy, then everything changed when the maize ration a'bract! It all ve'gan when a sudden *pop* in the farmer's market caused the global stalks to fall drastically. Bloomers of war spread quickly -under mushed voices at first- but it soon sprouted into full-grown cropaganda. The campaigns were effective enough at compelling me to join the farmy. Heh... I was so green, naively thinking I was going to grow forever. My Cob, was I wrong... Nothing quite prepares you for it until you cereal combat with your own eyes. The total cornage that first day left me shucked and amaized. My whole plantoon was nearly creamed amid all the shelling! Our kernel lost an ear. My close spuddy lost an eye... By some miracle gro, while garden' the perimeter, I spotted a clear root to victory. With grits and determination, we grained the high ground needed to control the field. After that, it was "slammed, canned, thank you ma'am." ... We won the Corn Wars, but at what cost?
When I went to Péru a few years ago, I visited a salt mine (a video in itself right there!) but one of the things we "just walked past" was a display of many varieties of maize, of varying sizes and colours. We got told about the cultivation, and the way that they had basically a research facility built into a natural basin where they used coils from many regions of the country, at different depths into the basin (to get different temperatures), then grew different varieties of maize, to work out which one would grow best in each geographical region. They did the same with potatoes. So there's a total of three video ideas for you!
It's one of those things modern humans should eat but, our ancestors did because it was often that or starve. It's kind of like how we're evolutionarily programmed to over eat because for millions of years since a large feast was rare so stock up while you can. It hasn't even been 100 years since you can literally buy as much food as you have money and large meals are way too common.
How do you talk about nixtamalization and not share that we call it "hominy" in the USA? Good stuff, definitely recommend it. Heated up straight from the can, or with a bit of butter and salt.
Gotta be more then just a bunch coincidences on how we ended up with modern corn. The kernel of corn is practically encased in plastic and how the body rids itself of corn and its shell is a miracle in itself. I'm fascinated with corn. You wanna know where modern humans have accomplished look to corn and also bed bugs. We followed the corn and they followed us.
@@gibbyjones1040 yes, we do. I have done it with my own hands. I have seen my family do it multiple times. Everyone I know eats nixtamalazed corn. I am a Mexican and I live in the area of former Mesoamerica. We literally never stopped doing this???
We still cook corn in an alkaline solution here in the Philippines. The resultant product whether you add salt or sugar is called 'Binatog'. It's one of my favorite breakfast/snack growing up as a child.
Many things we have domesticated should not have been "normal" but we've been choosing the "best" crops and controlling their evolution to be today's things. It IS genetically modified food... Nature didn't choose them to grow they way they did. Humans did that.
@@Only-Memories-In-The-End Yes it was Palpatine who secretly employed the Monsanto Kaminoans who genetically modified the Corn Troopers into GMO's that started the Corn Wars. The republic couldn't fight the Monsanto Kaminoans because the had so much power in the out rims in the trade federations. The droids couldn't be made fast enough to defeat the Corn Trooper armies.
@@Only-Memories-In-The-End Semantics. Selective breeding and crossbreeding is genetic modification only slower and more messy than what you can do in a lab
I wonder if the original hard shells were first bred away to make it easier to plant. Some seeds we don't eat need to be treated or prepared in some way to plant if you don't let them sit in the ground over winter.
In a galaxy far, far away, there was a battle unlike any other. It was not fought with blasters or lightsabers, but with ears of corn. This was the Corn Wars. The conflict began when the planet of Naboo discovered a new type of genetically modified corn that could grow faster and yield more kernels than any other crop in the galaxy. They shared their technology with the rest of the galaxy, but not everyone was happy about it. The planet of Dantooine, which was known for its traditional methods of corn farming, saw the new genetically modified corn as a threat to their way of life. They began to produce propaganda against the "unnatural" corn and urged other planets to boycott it. The Jedi Council tried to negotiate a peace treaty, but tensions continued to rise. Soon, there were battles breaking out across the galaxy as supporters of the new corn and traditionalists clashed. Corn fields were burned, husks were strewn across battlefields, and the sound of popping kernels echoed through space. The galaxy was in turmoil. The Jedi, led by the wise Master Yoda, tried to maintain peace and find a solution that would satisfy both sides. But as the war dragged on, it became clear that there could be no winners in the Corn Wars, only losers. In the end, a compromise was reached. The new corn would be allowed to grow, but traditional methods of farming would also be preserved. And so, the Corn Wars came to an end, with the galaxy finally at peace. But every year, on the anniversary of the start of the war, the citizens of the galaxy gather to celebrate with a corn festival, where they feast on corn in all its many forms and remember the lessons learned from the Corn Wars.
Only corn I am eating is on pizza. Or on cycling trip when I ride along corn field. I love fresh stolen corn. Good free frash snack. In central Eurpe we do not eat corn flakes or corn on grill a lot.
One note that usually gets missed and is an important note:
What most people think of with corn (soft sweet kernels) is actually a fairly recent thing, and is only a small fraction of corn grown and used. Called "sweetcorn"
The vast majority of corn grown is hard and starchy. And is harvested well after the crop has died and let dry out in the field.
"Field corn" or "yellow #2 corn/maize" is what is overwhelming grown and used in everything from cereal to animal feed.
And popcorn is a seperate small fraction of corn in its own group.
Yellow corn is actually Dent Corn. It was developed in the late 1800s. When it's called yellow #2 it's more of a grade than a name. Yellow #1 is the same thing just higher quality. Most Dent corn is sold as Yellow #2 as that is the largest market.
Before Reid, the breeder of Dent Corn, developed the first Dent corn most corn grown was red. Reid bred a red variety with various Flint and Flour varieties to produce Dent corn. It just happened to be yellow.
Soon after hybridization was developed and Dent Corn proved to work the best in this system. So today nearly all corn grown is related to what James L. Reid developed.
@@iafarmlife3766 correct 🙂 Thank you for clarifying.
yes! I remember until the 2010s in India, they had a different type of corn than I was used to in the United States. Then all of a sudden, every vendor replaced that corn with sweetcorn. Also, big on the animal feed bit. It takes a lot of water to create the field corn, and that corn is also used for ethanol creation
I love that there are "corn nerds" and this was also QUITE nice to see. I recall learning about field corn vs sweet corn in an episode of Good Eats :D
That's why there was all that unharvested corn growing everywhere in Indiana!
I absolutely love talking about how AMAZING the Indigenous New World peoples were at domesticating crazy and seemingly terrible plants - they turned a poisonous tiny root into basically the king if all single foods - the potato!
Their ingenuity was incredible, while the mesoamericans made corn (and more I'm sure!) the Andes were full of incredible potatoes and other plants on terraces - multigenerational projects designed to gradually adapt crops to different altitudes.
Then we have water and irrigation system of the Huari/Wari too!
And potatoes and tomatoes are both in the poisonous nightshade family.
Also I believe pumpkins too (my theory) where I live here on Yucatan, at the southeast of Mexico, there are some small green pumpkins, while on the US and Canada there are the classic big orange pumpkins, it looks to me like selective breeding, but I have no real info. If someone knows I'd love to hear.
Don’t forget Navajo- Diné potatoes in the mix
Well, it was either that, or die of starvation.
@@maksphoto78 You think they rocked up in Mexico and the next day had corn?
They survived for generations on pre-existing foods they could hunt and gather before they got even close to successfully domesticating anything
Domesticating foods made things easier and allowed denser populations to arise in complex societies, but it was never a given
How do you think ancient peoples existed before agriculture? They didn't starve to death or we wouldn't exist
as a Guatemalan, I'm happy you talked about nixtamalization, and the correct pronunciation of tortilla 😄😄
He should talk about how Gruma is taking over traditional nixtamal tortilla makers in Mexico. The traditional method isn’t legal in most parts of Texas. Guess who has that market? Maseca, which is owned by Gruma. The restaurant supply stores there has a whole aisle dedicated to Maseca. In California they have like a pallet sized area for it. There’s a ton of traditional tortillerias in California still, since Gruma doesn’t have a hold of the market
@@marcr1333 Could you provide a source for the claim that the traditional method is illegal in most parts of Texas? I wasn't able to find anything on that when I searched.
Said that right but not maize
The only people who mispronounce tortilla either live under a rock in the midwest, or are doing it on purpose.
Back in my botany classes in college, I made the joke "there is nothing we can do to corn that corn wouldn't do to itself given the opportunity." At some point in its post domestication evolution, it randomly doubled its genome. Super sweet corn was invented by irradiating the seeds. Corn is WEIRD.
None of that is particularly weird. Nor is it unique to corn.
genome duplication is pretty common in plants
@@DJFracus it's still very weird, it doesn't happen often, and it's very strange when it does.
And on top of that, corn belongs to a evolutionary lineage of plants that opted for a more rare but efficient photosynthetic process that will make them outlast other plants in less friendly environments in both temperature and sunlight.
And people are genetically experimenting rice to adopt that kind of photosynthesis to greatly reduce water and soil needs, which is something that can't be done through cross-breeding, the OG genetic engineering method of antiquity.
Only one of the three sweetness tweaks was through irradiation. The first sweet corn was iriquois.
Another important factor was likely the co-domestication of beans. Growing the two plants together may be another reason for selecting teosinte/corn with larger stalks - the corn stalks may have initially been used as scaffolding for the bean vines to grow on. Growing corn and beans together also keeps the soil healthier, as the bacteria in the root nodules of the legumes perform nitrogen fixation. And the combination of corn and beans also provides all of the amino acids necessary for a healthy diet.
Mostly. Even with the combined proteins there still is a significant bioavailabilty gap. Most humans do not get enough protein.
@Dwwolf not true modern humans get to much protein.
@@lordhriley Maybe in the "west". Maybe.
The rest of the world....not by a long shot.
they found a species of corn in Oaxaca, Mexico that skips the beans and fixes nitrogen in the soil all by itself.
@@dwwolf4636Source: my ass and cheeks. Modern humans eat diets extremely laden with processed red meat and dairy, and while it's not the healthiest source of protein; it IS without argument protein. If you want to proselytize about the benefits of cutting back fat and carbs then replacing them with more protein in your diet, sure, have fun with that; but false fear-mongering like "most humans don't get enough protein!" is unnecessary and undermines your "““cause””". 😂
2:45. They originally gave the kernels to their domesticated birds as a food, kept the stalk for themselves, after a few thousand years of cultivating for animal feed, someone got desperate and tried to make it into a bread. Many of the grains we now use were originally only fit for Cattle, Horses, or Fowl.
Most of them still are only fit for critter food. 🤔🤓🍻
So much of what we consider haute cuisine is actually poor people food made good. Like, half of French cooking is just grabbing whatever protein is nearby (snails, frog legs, etc.), throwing whatever seasonings you have handy on it to make it somewhat edible, and calling it dinner. Nobody with a choice does that to start with. That's something that starving peasants did because they were starving and then someone called it "cultural" and so it became fancy.
The author forgot all about the field corn that can be turned into ethanol and the by product of ethanol is DDG's ( dried distillers grain) which is used for animal feed.. In my town there an ethanol plant that produces both fuel and tons of DDG's every day , ship most of DDG's in container units overseas.
Nonsense. New World agriculturalists never domesticated cattle or horses
@@annarboriter OP's comment never implied any such thing
"I don't like eating GMOs. I prefer my veggies to be natural."
My brother in Christ, you're eating corn.
I have read that 95% of the "ear corn" grown in America today is genetically modified, which is why I will ONLY purchase "certified organic corn" - even though I KNOW that doesn't mean anything! At least I'm trying... 🙁
@@dixietenbroeck8717 all grains eaten are "genetically modified" but not by modifying the actual genes, but by crossbreeding plants and continuing with the ones who gained the desired traits.
@@stevevernon1978 agreed, what people think of when they hear GMOs should probably be called Genetically Edited Organisms or GEOs
@@MrCubFan415 you're a GEO
@@dixietenbroeck8717 The best thing for your health is to avoid corn altogether.
Native American farmers were amazing developing maize and potatoes, those are super foods who feed millions.
They had to be starving
@@seanthe100 What do you think they were eating before?
More kernals = more seeds
more seeds = more plants
More plants = extra seeds
Extra seeds = the extras can be eaten
Being eaten = new selective focus for breeding
The invention of Nixtamalization is also easy to guess: You want corn soup, but your pot is made of wood and you don't want to make a new pot every time after cooking. So instead of putting the wooden pot over the fire you put stones in the fire to heat them. Then you take the hot (and usually ashy) stones and throw them in the pot to heat the soup.
@@Samu2010lolcats ooohhh actually there is a difference cause if it, the oldest method for boiling was using boiling stones, stones placed in wood fires till they were hot then transfered to the dish of water, this introduced ash hut also the stones used often were lime stone which would be heated and cause the formation of slaked lime when used in this way, thats actually where the calcium hydroxide comes from, standard wood ash creates potassium hydroxide or lye, both can be used in nixtamalisation so there is a bit more there but it's all easily seen from the tech and geography of the times
In a program about corn, the presenter asked the scientist can you pop teosinte ? The scientist said I dont know, so they tried and yes teosinte does pop and then you can eat it. So if they ate the juice, plonked the dry seeds on the fire and they popped and some one ate it?
That makes sense. Popcorn has the hardest hull of any of the modern variations of corn. The only thing I can think of that kept that from being the pre-contact technique being it was probably pretty destructive to the pottery. :-)
@@ernestsmith3581 I get that it was a joke but that made me wanna ask more questions. Like did humans just set a thin granite rock on top of the fire with teosinte seeds on top of it. Anything is possible when given thousands of years and the fact that all effort went toward improving the life of yourself, your family, and maybe 100 or so tribe members
@@Sumanitu I would think roasting the early Zea cultivar seeds to make them pop, giving access to the starch, would be just as likely a reason to begin cultivating the plant as chewing the stems for a sweet juice. And I was being silly - popping corn in a paper bag happens thousands of times per day on this planet, so I doubt seriously a properly vented fired clay pot would break from a kernel strike. Even if they did, enclosing the seed in a large green leaf pouch tied at top would work just fine.
Thanks, Hanna Young for pointing this out. It really does make sense to eat the seeds if you have an excess (and what gardener doesn't save too many seed?). I am not aware of any grass seed that cannot be eaten (but don't take my word for it, there may be some!), and in a survival situation would choose grains over unknown herbs.
@@ernestsmith3581 Pre white people popcorn was made on hot flat rocks, not in pots. So toss some branches of teosinte on the fire for fuel, the seed husk hits the hot rocks and pops and why not eat them?
How you seen the self fertilising's giant corn? That is very interesting, when it comes to corn.
The treated corn you speak of is also known as "Hominy" here in the US South, and when dried and ground, is known as 'Grits.'
I have eaten the Hominy out of a can, Toasted as a snack called "CornNuts" by brand name, and mostly as grits. Butter and Salt, with my scrambled eggs, or as part of the dish(es) known as 'Shrimp Gits.'
Mmmm, Yummy!
Grits is one of the most important foods in American history. It comes from Southern whites learning from natives instead of ignoring them. It kept both from starving.
Was going to comment this!
I LOVE grits.
Grits has been eaten in Mexico for thousands of years.
savory grits, sweat grits, watered down as a drink, etc.
I’m surprised by just how many cultures in the americas have some kind of cooking that involves wood ash. Where I live, in the Shuswap region of BC, many different kinds of plant roots where cooked by being boiled in an alkaline solution or steamed (plants like Wild Sarsaparilla and False Solomons-Seal)
Not just the Americas. Bagels and pretzels are dipped or boiled in a lye solution, and ramen has some sort of alkaline liquid mixed in (though I'm not sure if that last one would have been made from wood ash, specifically).
Many foods from many cultures around the world have utilized some wood ash type process for food.
If you are cooking over a wooden fire, it would not be uncommon to get wood ash in the stew
Edit: I believe I saw that in an Adam Ragusea video, I am no infinite fountain of knowledge, I couldn't tell you more than that
@@Alchoholics_Anonymous
I've also heard it theorized that some of these processes might have been discovered by people mixing wood ash into their grain when they stored it to keep bugs out. If a little water got in there, it would've formed some sort of lye solution soaking the grain.
No clue if it's true, but it's a cool idea.
I'm also in the Shuswap (SA) & seeing this comment in the wild of UA-cam blew my mind
SciShow never fails to nixtamilize my mind's dietary needs cognitively.
Amazing comment
Maize
What a word nixtamilize
Nixtamilize? 🤣
True wit!
I never would have guessed the evolution of corn was this interesting. Thanks for the fun facts SciShow. Huzzah!
I can solve the conundrum about why the focus switched
The more seeds the teosinte had the more plants could be planted, so that became a breeding point, then there was eventually enough extra that people were like hey maybe we can eat it. Fron there i think it all makes sense
The evolution of the avocado is even crazier, this type of fruit developed due to a symbiosis with giant mammals such as ground sloths and mastodons from Central and South America, however they became extinct a few thousand years ago, which meant that the plant did'nt have a way to spread its seeds, without human intervention, it is possible that it too would have become extinct.
Huzzah!
@@ConstantChaos1 So many foods in the world started out as some guy asking "what if we eat it"
@@dieptrieu6564 I meaning it's either hey what if I eat that or hey that other thing is eating it let me try
You may also know Nixtamal as Hominy.the stuff my greatgran use to make was way better than the stuff in a can.
After it becomes hominy it is ground into grits, which is the best way to eat corn IMHO. 🤔🤓🍻
@@alsaunders7805 I like it best as a vehicle for guacamole. Mmmmmm guacamole!
@@LambentLark I think they are gross mashed into guacamole, I really like somewhat underripe ones cut up in chunks in a salad though. 🤓🍻
@@LambentLark I'm weird, most people that don't like guacamole don't like avocados. I do, I especially like avocado oil for cooking and making condiments/dressings.
🤔🤓🍻
@@alsaunders7805 lol. Naw, that would be gross! I was thinking after they been made into tortilla chips. A much tastier vehicle.
I thought “nixtamal” was “neesh-tamal”- comes from Nahuatl (the Aztec language) for “ash dough” (since wood ash is alkaline)- X’s were put into words because Spanish colonizers didn’t know how to write for glottal stops and foreign sounds.
it is
and by the way the glottal stop is
Actually, Spanish writers used something called _saltillo_ for glottal stops.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltillo_(linguistics)
aztecs and europeans are both 500 years removed from any actual American history before 1500ce. maize has been around a long time.
I remember when the show Good Eats did an episode on corn, they said the Mesoamericans grew two grasses near each other because they grew better that way. The two grasses eventually cross-pollinated and created an early version of corn.
Interesting.
That was one of my favorite shows back then.
But is it true at all?
@@DysnomiaFilms No. Teosinte is the only wild ancestor of modern corn.
@@TrueThanny Yeah smart guy? Where did Teosinte come from?
I'm still amazed we turned wolves Into something that can fit in a purse😅
Dogs don't come from wolves. They share a common ancestor.
@@mawlinzebra actually they believe wolves started by following nomads as lone wolfs and eating the scraps of things we killed. Eventually humans started to feel comfortable around the wolves and would feed them instead of watch them from a distance. Making them part of our pack. Just like how pigs change when domesticated so did they
@@mawlinzebra the common ancestor is the grey wolf
@@mawlinzebra Humans don't come from humans. They share a common ancestor. The common ancestor between dogs today and wolves today was a wolf, just as the common ancestor between your and your next door neighbor was also a human.
Dogs and wolves are, strictly speaking, the same species still. They just don't ever breed together without human intervention.
@@mawlinzebra dogs are a subspecies of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) called Canis lupus familiaris. So in some sense they didn't come from wolves, but rather they ARE wolves.
You didn’t explain how nixtamalisation was discovered: the most ancient way of processing maize is by grinding it on limestone molcajetes or metates, with a little bit of water. The lime would dissolve in the water and activate the maize flour. Over time, soaking and boiling in lime was developed to make the process more consistent.
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican to the other: 'You cannot eat that plant called teosinte'.
Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just start a 9 thousand year-long process of genetic modification to create a whole new plant species that is edible.'
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But even then, you cannot make a regular diet of the new plant species because it will cause a sickness called pellagra since it would not contain niacinamide.'
Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just invent an alkaline chemical process called nixtamalization and start an oral tradition that will extend thousands of years in the future to pass along instructions of how to make the then genetically modified plant species edible.'
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But I am hungry now.'
Can you do a vid about cassava? Another staple that requires a little bit more prep to not only be edible but to be safe to eat.
The next chapter in the story of corn may come as a result of a variety found in the remote mountains of Mexico that fixes its' own nitrogen with the help of a symbiotic slime. Combining the traits of that variety with commercially farmed varieties would eliminate the need for a lot of fertilizer.
That would be a huge game changer
What's interesting is a split must have happened at some point amongst north american and south american/mexican farmers. One group started cultivating the slime variety to increase nitrogen while the other group started growing corn with legumes to fix nitrogen into the surrounding soil. Even with the slime though there is still the need for a little fertilizer, and it looks like they occasionally grow beans in the cornfields as an alternative.
I wonder if anyone is doing work on this.
Holy crap, as soon as I saw the hominy corn in this video it brought me back to both my grandma's cooking. It's so awesome to know that both of them learned those techniques for making corn tortillas and menudo.
For context: my dad's mom is native American and my moms mom is native mexican
Hominy corn is best corn in stews imo.
Re: the drawing used at 06:03, fun fact: those little scrolls coming out of the person’s mouth are the way Nahuatl people would represent singing. I just think that’s neat!
Probably the subject of a whole other video, but another reason corn became popular is it is the host for an edible and delicious fungus called Corn Smut, or huitlacoche in native Mexican Nahuatl. It does decrease the overall yield for the infected field, but farmers more than make up for it by selling the immature fungal galls to restaurants. They taste like a sweeter version of a truffle and provide the essential nutrients that un-nixtimalized corn does not.
I had huitlacoche tacos in Mexico on the Yucatan Caribbean coast. Perhaps the waiter was afraid to tell a gringo what it really is; he said it was black coral! Weird at first bite but tasty. I heard there's a place in Detroit that serves them. I'm in the burbs but will have to check it out.
I remember learning about this somewhere else and I'm still wondering which brave soul was the first to try eating the weird-looking fungus growing on their corn. Also, "Corn Smut" sounds more like a very niche genre of p0rn0gr@phy (cornography, you might say) than the name of a food lol.
@@peggedyourdad9560
Thought the same thing too lmao XD
Corn smut
It's cuitlacochin
Excellent episode. Thanks to you and the team!
I was amaized by these facts!
Can you do an episode like this, but for olives? Olives are also freaking crazy.
They are also delicious
@@Praisethesunson Not off the plant, which is no doubt the reason for the request you're replying to. They are utterly inedible without a serious amount of processing.
Olives in the states are awful and I've heard they're really good fresh
@@Nixdigo I've heard that they're practically inedible fresh. That they require curing to make them edible.
@@Nixdigo Two entirely false statements in one sentence. Good job.
3:39 A patch of corn can sustain itself for a few years before collapsing due to neglect. It certainly can sow itself but not for very long.
Fun fact: the corn kernels you see in the toilet are actually little poop balloons. The insides were digested and the void is replaced by poop.
Delicious.
Fcuk i blissfully thought it was just undigested seeds.....now that is something you can never unsee....wtaf lol
Don't tell me I was eating poop for approximately 1 year in my lifetime 💀
[Edit] i didn't read the comment properly
pooplloons*
TMI🤮
“To this day, corn is among the least nutritious staple crops”
Me, elbow deep in a family sized bag of skinny pop right now: “BUT THE INTERNET TOLD ME ITS A GOOD SOURCE OF FIBER 😭”
Fiber isn’t a nutrient, it’s a physical thing. Our bodies need fiber, because our intestines need bulk to optimize digestion.
It's labeled as good for you because it's not bad for you... because it's not anything for you at all. You're eating popcorn to satisfy your urge to taste stuff. Try eating foods with calories when you do work that requires calories.
Even fiber is only good in certain amounts. Too much gives me massive diarrhea.
Fiber is more like filler for our bodies
@@asmrtpop2676 I'm glad youtube notified me so i'd read that...
80,000 year old popcorn pollen found in a cave near Mexico City
it seems that while nixtamalization did not spread to Europe, it did to China, corn has been a staple food in some regions and they do use alkaline solutions in the preparation process. If possible, please make a follow-up video about it
I do love corn and everything it has done for us as a species 🌽🌽🌽
Good to meet you, my last name is Corn and I’m proud my people’s accomplishments as well lol
I'm more a fan of rice and potatoes myself.
@@Great_Olaf5 then ur a loser corn is better
what a guy
@@clon1122 😂
I wonder what other plants could use a bit of tweaking to become good crops.
I think pawpaws are the best candidate. It's cold hardy but it's a tropical fruit fruit somehow. Not alot of breeding has been done on it. I bet if people tried you could get something like a banana that grows in cold climates
@@hawks9142 pawpaws are native to Kansas, but they are becoming more and more rare. They really are edible, and there was a family on my paper route about 30 years ago that would send me some that they grew, for my father to eat. I refused to try them because to me at the time they looked too much like the part of a man that determines gender.
@@justinweatherford8129 haha well of you ever get over your fear they are a really good fruit. Just alot of work that can be done, Smaller seeds and longer shelf life is what I think needs to be done before it could be commercially viable
A big key to Zea maize's success is the fact the male and female flowers are located in different places on the plant.
@@hawks9142 Are paw paws also maypops? We have maypops in Alabama, but you have to go out in the woods yourself to get them. I want them genetically altered so they can be sold in stores. I'm tired of fighting mosquitoes and possums and running into snakes while I'm looking for maypops. Last time there was lagerhead turtle, literally guarding the patch. Or maybe he just stopped for a rest on his way to the river. Either way, I took off running the other way, that thing was bigger than my dog and I didn't feel like having my arm snapped off.
The fact that corn is in practically everything makes it really difficult for those who can’t have corn (allergic)! Seriously, the corn people can retire.. they’ve done their job for several lifetimes!!
The story of corn is a-maize-ing!
You need to leave sir.
Maize is the actual specific name for the corn native to the Americas that this video talks about. The word "corn" is a generic English (ie. British Isles English) term for almost any form of grain. Wheat, barley, oats, etc can all considered corn according to the original word's meaning.
Of course the meaning has changed, it's weird seeing old books talking about "corn" and finding out it's wheat
"Corn" is short for "Indian corn" I believe.
This is true
Sweetcorn in UK
@@theunholybanana4745 it's still used in Europe, some europeans call it maize or Spanish maíz
Also, nictmalization took care of any nasties growing on the corn.
Tasting History taught me about nixtamalization already. Guest host for food themed scishow Max Miller. Make it happen.
This is just a guess, but I'd think that it started growing into cobs once humans managing the growing plants and consuming the stalks meant that there was a suddenly larger incentive to produce a lot more seeds, and the shift into growing the plant specifically for its seeds came after a sudden mutation thinned out the glume.
The thing about the teosinte juices makes sense for the "why domesticate it in the first place" question - there's a whole bunch of things that are just so bad originally one wonders who and why would have ever started trying to make it better. Watermelons? I wonder how we came from a small unpleasant thing with barely any red parts to the monsters we eat nowadays.
Some researchers believe ancient Mesoamericans started cultivating teosinte cause they made popcorn out of it. It makes sense since they also cultivated and ate amaranth the same way.
And yet nixtamalization is still a mystery to so many people.
Not really surprising. It involves basically soaking the kernels in basically low-level cleaning agent (limewater can be used as disinfectant). In my country, rice is our staple and corn is just a snack...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 wood ash is what has been traditionally used by native Americans for nixtamalization. Natural nonGMO nixtamalized corn is much more nutritious than rice…
Thanks to mesoamerican ingenuity and their agricultural science
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican to the other: 'You cannot eat that plant called teosinte'.
Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just start a 9 thousand year-long process of genetic modification to create a whole new plant species that is edible.'
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But even then, you cannot make a regular diet of the new plant species because it will cause a sickness called pellagra since it would not contain niacinamide.'
Second Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'No problem, I will just invent an alkaline chemical process called nixtamalization and start an oral tradition that will extend thousands of years in the future to pass along instructions of how to make the then genetically modified plant species edible.'
First Prehistoric Mesoamerican: 'But I am hungry now.'
You should see about the corn in mexico that can make it's own fertilizer from roots above ground and ooze out fertilizer 😮
Genetic engineering corn was more difficult than going to the moon. It took generations of dedication to do it. It wasn’t a happy accident
and going to space helps no one on earth and never will, unlike Maize which feeds so many.
I'm amazed you're able to say the terms "corn wars" and "corn truce" with a straight face. Seems like as of now what can only be called cornology is still ongoing.
Between rice, wheat and corn, most of modern human's diets consist of heavily mutated grasses. Then realize that most of what we consider our leafy greens are actually the same plant selectively mutated into different versions to favor different parts. We've also cross-bred most natural fruit to get fruit more appealing to us. Same thing with roots and tubers. All before the panic over GMO's ever caught hold.
Genetic mutation? Should we do it?
WE'VE ALREADY BEEN DOING IT! 🤷🏻
It's absolutely crazy how many things contain corn/corn-based ingredients! After nearly 30 years of suffering from quite bad stomach pains, we finally figured out that I was allergic to corn. Now, I read every ingredient list before I buy something. Corn starch, corn flour, corn syrup, E1412, there are so many different things I have to look out for. Seems I will never be able to have those incredible Mexican taco's.
As always, thank you for the great science, Scishow!
There's also Tacos whose tortilla was made with wheat flour. Not quite the same flavor but still, you can most definitely eat some tasty tacos 🌮
GMO corn might be the real problem
Do you have to import all your food from Europe?
@@aethylwulfeiii6502 It's way too expensive out here to do that... I've learnt to live around it. Life is too short to not enjoy good food, and you can make a lot of good food without anything corn!
Where's The Corn Kid? 🥰🤣
That kid was so adorable.
Corn dance...... take a corn break!
It's corn! A big lump with knobs, it has the juice.
Now this is going to be stuck in my head
It's grass
I grow Hopi Blue Corn near its ancestral homeland in Northern Arizona. This variety is said to be over 1200 years old, and is much more like modern sweet corn (dent corn) than many of the flour corn varieties grown in the Eastern US. The Hopi people do not claim to have domesticated this corn, but that it was brought to them by other worldly beings.
It has a profoundly deep root system (upwards of 5 feet deep) and was grown on the arid mesas of the southwest entirely grown by rain. It was typically grown alongside squash and beans in a practice known as "The Three Sisters". The squash, with their broad leaves and long vines, would shade the ground from the intense heat, slowing water evaporation, and the legumes (beans) were used to fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, thus making a sustainable agricultural model for arid farming practices.
The drought tolerance of Hopi Blue Corn is incomparable to modern corn, and is ultra rich is B vitamins and 40% higher in protein. This is, of course, to no avail without nixtamalization, which can be done with either potassium hydroxide (wood ash/lye), or calcium hydroxide (quicklime/pickling lime). To nixtamalize, simmer the corn kernels in the alkali solution for around 30 minutes, remove from heat, let sit for around 24 hours. Strain (careful, lye is caustic), and rinse thoroughly to remove the alkali. You then need to remove the germ (outer shell of the kernel) by crushing the kernels in your hands in a bowl of clean water. If the nixtamalization was done properly, the germ should easily seperate and float to the top of the water which can then be strained or poured off. A little bit of germ leftover is OK.
You can use the fresh nixtamale (wet) as hominy, or can easily grind it into a dough for tortillas. This is how you make authentic tortillas: there is no other way around it. You can also dry the ground nixtamale and further reduce it to a dry flour for long term storage.
Thank you for your detailed explanation, Crystal Dragon. ☺️
@@Pheelyp always glad to share knowledge. Thank you for receiving it.
wow, I love everything about corn! I love how huitlacoche grows on them!
There were no coincidences, just a man that saw something hard to eat and say "I'm going to find the way to eat you." One of the reason why people ate Eels, Blowfish or Onions.
You get hominy when you soak your corn in lye water. It's not just used for masa but is good on it's own as a vegetable. You can find it in cans in the supermarket or in bags in stores with a higher Mexican population. I've seen mothers give hominy from the bags to their toddlers like other mothers give dry cereals. It works. The little kids love it. I like it cooked with ham (usually left over from a holiday). Grits are made from hominy that has been dried and ground. Cook those bits of corn and you have a delicious dish for breakfast. Huzzah Sci Show and Huzzah to corn!
It's really quite interesting and I wonder what more plants are out there that could change drastically but we just don't think about them because nobody is really doing anything with them.
Great video !
I learnt so many things......at 67 !
Thanks.
Trinidad & Tobago.
West Indies.
Ok
How much will a pirate pay for their corn?
Arrh, A. Buccaneer!
You win
Wow....I never realized how corn is so different now, than it was long ago. Never knew it was so complicated
Those tasty looking taco things at the end convinced me that the corn wars were worth it.
Idk about wood ash but my parents who grew up in mexican villages would put cal in the corn as it’s being boiled. Cal is just calcium hydroxide. Wish you could have covered this!
Wood ash can be a source of Calcium Oxide that can be issolved in water to make Calcium hydroxide...
Nixtamalized corn is also used for Pozole and it exists before the Spanish arrived
It is my understanding that teosinte can be eaten... as popcorn. So while the yummy sugar juices might have been a more dominant factor, they were probably popping teosinte along with it from the beginning and so that aspect made sense to improve just like every other.
Meanwhile corn syrup, vegetable oil, canola oil, palm oil, etc is destroying us
How did they even think to process corn in that way without modern chemistry knowledge? It always amazes me the inventiveness and leaps humankind suddenly makes.
remember when greeks and romans were counting with letters, the people making maize already mapped the cosmos and created a calendar with the use of real numbers and zero. with zero you can count into the trillions, try doing that with letters : P
Empirical testing obv
Trial and error basically...
Chemistry isn’t new, just the current terminology is.
Clearly they had to have been starving
I can just see it now. Mesoamericans in 5000 BCE worked diligently in their genetic laboratories to perform "those few genetic changes' in teosinte that changed it into corn. Then, they handed this corn over to the lab next door, where nixtamalization was being invented in their volumetric flasks, crucibles, and bunsen burners. They got the ash from burning the sacrifices to the Gods, because, why not! And so this was how corn tortillas were created for you and me to enjoy! Now, we just need them to invent tomatoes and peppers for the salsa, which isn't yet a thing...
They also made the covid flu, and the Chinese came and stole some. It was recently rediscovered around 2019.
Teosinte: ha, I'm inedible.
Humans: you underestimate my powers.
Yes, humans are self-destructive like that. Now, obesity is the number one health problem in the USA.
So corn basically said
"You want a piece of me!?"
"Fine Ill give you more than you can handle"
and we went
"Nice"
“If you keep eating corn, you will keep shitting, corn“
Pellagra; There is a vid on that. In the southern US industry was taking the niacin from corn and selling what remained to the poverty stricken, resulting in a pellagra epidemic. This is how industry still rolls today, taking what they want from a thing and selling the rest for other purposes, i.e., sugar from corn for syrup and the remaining mash to pet food. I do wonder why the ingredients of a jar of Jiff PB., (it's first industrial maker), lists veggie oil. Are they taking the peanut oil and selling it to fast food fryers? Industry telling me the whys and wherefores is hardly trustworthy. You got anything on it?
I'm allergic to corn. You're not kidding when you say it's in most items on the grocery store shelves. 😢
For example, powdered sugar. I have to buy organic powered sugar because it uses tapioca starch instead of corn starch. It's not just sugar ground up real fine. I have to make my own baking powder substitute with baking soda and cream of tartar, because, you guessed it, corn starch.
@@Msfr1sby I use a coffee grinder to make my own powdered sugar from normal granulated one! It’s not the fancy vanillated kind, but it does the job
Same here. Grocery shopping sucks because it's in almost everything, at least in the US. It's also one of, if not the most highly genteelly modified foods. I didn't even know about baking powder but I don't bake much either.
"Corn Shouldn't Be Food, But It Is."
And I am very thankful for that!
It’s a big lump with knobs. I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing
It's corn.... IT HAS THE JUICE!
I was looking for this comment. I can't believe it wasn't the top one.
@@3800S1 Corn break!
And without it, imagine the famine.
As someone with a corn sensitivity.... I FEEL that corn making up "20% of all nutrition." Makes it nearly imposible for me to find something to eat lol.
Move to Europe, problem solved.
As the lyrics say : wheels are made for rolling ; mules are made to pack...
l add this one : corns are made to feed cow and pig.
Ah... I remember the Corn Wars.
Taters, wheat, rice, and beans- The four rations lived together in hominy, then everything changed when the maize ration a'bract!
It all ve'gan when a sudden *pop* in the farmer's market caused the global stalks to fall drastically.
Bloomers of war spread quickly -under mushed voices at first- but it soon sprouted into full-grown cropaganda.
The campaigns were effective enough at compelling me to join the farmy.
Heh... I was so green, naively thinking I was going to grow forever.
My Cob, was I wrong...
Nothing quite prepares you for it until you cereal combat with your own eyes.
The total cornage that first day left me shucked and amaized.
My whole plantoon was nearly creamed amid all the shelling!
Our kernel lost an ear. My close spuddy lost an eye...
By some miracle gro, while garden' the perimeter, I spotted a clear root to victory.
With grits and determination, we grained the high ground needed to control the field.
After that, it was "slammed, canned, thank you ma'am."
... We won the Corn Wars, but at what cost?
Ingenious! 😅
Waiting for the corny jokes…
Ohhhhh I seee what you did theerrrrree
I'm sure there will be a cornucopia of them
Lol
anyone who says one is gonna get an earful
found it
Corn is no place for a mighty warrior.
We should randomly take Dead Nettles and make their purple flowers bigger.
Who knows where it will lead.
When I went to Péru a few years ago, I visited a salt mine (a video in itself right there!) but one of the things we "just walked past" was a display of many varieties of maize, of varying sizes and colours. We got told about the cultivation, and the way that they had basically a research facility built into a natural basin where they used coils from many regions of the country, at different depths into the basin (to get different temperatures), then grew different varieties of maize, to work out which one would grow best in each geographical region.
They did the same with potatoes.
So there's a total of three video ideas for you!
There was something similar in Cali I think.
This made me crave corn. I literally had to stop the video and make some corn on the cob 🌽🌽🌽
🌽🌽this comment made me open a can of corn and slurp it down🌽🌽
Corns origin story is the real point of interest
“Glume is the part that gets stuck between your teeth”
That’s a weird way to say comes out in your poop
I knew all this. And glad corn finally getting its props. It allowed many civilizations to sprout.
Corn *is* almost inedible, to me. Messes with me hardcore, I have to avoid it!
That fresh summer corn when it’s just right a little bit of butter, maybe some salt and pepper one of the best things about summer
It's one of those things modern humans should eat but, our ancestors did because it was often that or starve. It's kind of like how we're evolutionarily programmed to over eat because for millions of years since a large feast was rare so stock up while you can. It hasn't even been 100 years since you can literally buy as much food as you have money and large meals are way too common.
How do you talk about nixtamalization and not share that we call it "hominy" in the USA? Good stuff, definitely recommend it. Heated up straight from the can, or with a bit of butter and salt.
Hi, would hominy be the same as Italian polenta?
@@lyndas2767 no, polenta would be most similar to grits in the USA
Gotta be more then just a bunch coincidences on how we ended up with modern corn. The kernel of corn is practically encased in plastic and how the body rids itself of corn and its shell is a miracle in itself. I'm fascinated with corn. You wanna know where modern humans have accomplished look to corn and also bed bugs. We followed the corn and they followed us.
We still do nixtamalization, of course. It makes everything taste so much better!!
no we don't - watch DR. BILL SCHINDLER
@@gibbyjones1040 yes, we do. I have done it with my own hands. I have seen my family do it multiple times. Everyone I know eats nixtamalazed corn. I am a Mexican and I live in the area of former Mesoamerica. We literally never stopped doing this???
@@lyxthen Yes! the señoras in my family still doing it too, most people in the rural areas of México do the same
We still cook corn in an alkaline solution here in the Philippines. The resultant product whether you add salt or sugar is called 'Binatog'. It's one of my favorite breakfast/snack growing up as a child.
Thanks to the Mexican people for making the corn into today's corn.
Many things we have domesticated should not have been "normal" but we've been choosing the "best" crops and controlling their evolution to be today's things. It IS genetically modified food... Nature didn't choose them to grow they way they did. Humans did that.
@@Only-Memories-In-The-End Yes it was Palpatine who secretly employed the Monsanto Kaminoans who genetically modified the Corn Troopers into GMO's that started the Corn Wars. The republic couldn't fight the Monsanto Kaminoans because the had so much power in the out rims in the trade federations. The droids couldn't be made fast enough to defeat the Corn Trooper armies.
@@Only-Memories-In-The-End Semantics. Selective breeding and crossbreeding is genetic modification only slower and more messy than what you can do in a lab
I wonder if the original hard shells were first bred away to make it easier to plant. Some seeds we don't eat need to be treated or prepared in some way to plant if you don't let them sit in the ground over winter.
Big lump with knobs.
It has the juice.
10/10.
Have a corn-tastic day.
In a galaxy far, far away, there was a battle unlike any other. It was not fought with blasters or lightsabers, but with ears of corn. This was the Corn Wars.
The conflict began when the planet of Naboo discovered a new type of genetically modified corn that could grow faster and yield more kernels than any other crop in the galaxy. They shared their technology with the rest of the galaxy, but not everyone was happy about it.
The planet of Dantooine, which was known for its traditional methods of corn farming, saw the new genetically modified corn as a threat to their way of life. They began to produce propaganda against the "unnatural" corn and urged other planets to boycott it.
The Jedi Council tried to negotiate a peace treaty, but tensions continued to rise. Soon, there were battles breaking out across the galaxy as supporters of the new corn and traditionalists clashed.
Corn fields were burned, husks were strewn across battlefields, and the sound of popping kernels echoed through space. The galaxy was in turmoil.
The Jedi, led by the wise Master Yoda, tried to maintain peace and find a solution that would satisfy both sides. But as the war dragged on, it became clear that there could be no winners in the Corn Wars, only losers.
In the end, a compromise was reached. The new corn would be allowed to grow, but traditional methods of farming would also be preserved. And so, the Corn Wars came to an end, with the galaxy finally at peace.
But every year, on the anniversary of the start of the war, the citizens of the galaxy gather to celebrate with a corn festival, where they feast on corn in all its many forms and remember the lessons learned from the Corn Wars.
written by chat gpt
Wouldn't it make more sense to celebrate the anniversary of the end of the war?
And that anniversary date is, you guessed it, the 4th of May.... as they say: May The Forth Be With You.
@@kewlman5417 nope, this was the original plot of star wars
Me who lives in rice Asia: _Hmm, interesting_
Only corn I am eating is on pizza. Or on cycling trip when I ride along corn field. I love fresh stolen corn. Good free frash snack.
In central Eurpe we do not eat corn flakes or corn on grill a lot.
There's actually four main kinds of corn, and has the highest protein and fiber that you can get from a grain.