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APRIL | MAY 2022 • IDAHO SENIOR INDEPENDENT hOME & LIFESTYLE PAGE 9

GIVE A DAM,

they keep your

power affordable.

Photo by Steve Heikkila. ICE HARBOR DAM | BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION

After the process of nixtamalization, the niacin is freed and becomes
bioavailable. Whoa! That’s an amazing thing!
This last point about the niacin is a huge deal. There is a rather
nasty disease called pellagra, caused by a niacin deficiency, and
this disease is more common in maize-eating cultures due to
the low bioavailability of niacin in corn. When Europeans were
introduced to corn, they adopted the grain but not the bothersome
nixtamalization process. Turns out this wasn’t a very good idea. What does removal of the LOWER
This unfortunate omission was responsible for a pellegra epidemic SNAKE RIVER DAMS mean
in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. for YOUR electric bill?
The first case was diagnosed in Atlanta in 1902. The patient was
a poor Georgia farmer who reportedly subsisted on a diet mainly of
“Indian corn” (that obviously had not undergone nixtamalization). Although they are in Washington state, the lower
By 1940 more than 3 million Americans had been afflicted with Snake River dams (LSRD) have a direct impact on
pellagra, and more than 100,000 died. This occurred mainly among your finances.
the poor in the south, who subsisted on a corn-heavy diet. PROJECTION: Removing the four LSRD could
And yet poor people in Mexico during this same time period, mean a 25% or more increase in residential
electricity rates.*
who also subsisted on a corn-heavy diet, didn’t experience this
pellagra problem. The difference? Nixtamalization, my friend. If you appreciate having affordable, carbon-free
hydropower, give a dam and make a stand. Stand
NIXTAMAL, POZOLE, AND hOMINY with hydro.
What’s in a name? I’ve been making pozole for years. It consists
mainly of a broth containing chicken or pork, hominy, and dried *Source: Executive Summary Columbia River System Operations
(pozole rojo) or fresh (pozole verde) chilies. Imagine my confusion Environmental Impact Statement (oclc.org)
when I learned that this ancient recipe was named after the corn
used to make it: pozole.
“Double-you-tee-eff?” I immediately thought, “Pozole is a
kind of corn? All these years I’ve been making it with hominy!”
Silly me. I was the victim of a linguistic confusion, my friend. It
took me a while to figure it all out. When I did my insomnia was
cured. Here is the deal.
Nixtamalization is frequently described as a Mesoamerican
thing. The word nixtamalli (origin of the word nixtamal) is from
the Nahualti language, which was the language of the Aztecs.
It’s still spoken by over a million native people in Mexico to this
day. The word pozole is also from the Nahualti language. There
is archaeological evidence of nixtamalization being practiced in
Guatemala and Mexico going back to at least 1200 BCE. Hello! That’s
three millennia of pozole eating and tortilla eating, and tamales,
and all of the other things you can make from nixtamalized corn.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Now onto grits. That’s right. Grits! I promise this is going
somewhere. Did you know grits are a Native American dish? I’m
talking about that corn porridge that American Southerners love
to eat for breakfast, in lieu of hash browns, with eggs and country
ham and red-eye gravy. Those grits. Native Americans were eating
those grits long before Europeans arrived in North America.
Grits are made from hominy, and “hominy” is a Powhatan (Virginia
Algonquian) word. It was first recorded in English in 1629 by Captain
John Smith, leader of the Virginia colony (Jamestown). And what is
hominy? It’s maize that’s undergone the process of nixtamalization.
And thus nixtamalization was practiced not only in Mesoamerica,
but by native peoples throughout North America well into modern
day Canada. And Nixtamal is called pozole in Spanish because of
the Aztecs. And nixtamal is called hominy in English because of Want to know more?
the Powhatan. Cool, huh?
www.flatheadelectric.com/helphydro
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