Nixtamalization and the maize that crossed without it

Mesoamerica did not merely domesticate maize; it invented the alkaline cooking that makes maize a safe staple, releasing bound niacin and tryptophan, multiplying its calcium and destroying most of its fungal toxins. The grain crossed the Atlantic in Spanish ships. The chemistry did not. Pellagra was first recognised as a clinical problem in eighteenth-century Spain and Italy, and the deficiency behind it was not identified until the 1920s and 1930s.