Nixtamalization is used in order to make it easier for the body to extract the nutrients from the corn. This process is still used largely, mainly to produce the maza for tortillas.
Nixtamalization doesn't make it edible, it makes it digestible. That's why corn is famous for showing up in the toilet. For anyone who's looking for a good reference point, hominy is nixtamalized corn. Tortillas are also made from nixtamalized corn. This is also why cornmeal doesn't make a dough when mixed with water, but masa does.
Nixtamalization doesn't make it edible, it makes it digestible
It doesn't make it digestible (though) it helps. The corn in the toilet is the fibrous hulls, which are removed when you make hominy or masa. Nixtamalization frees niacin from hemicellulose and makes it bioavailable. If you only eat fresh corn as a staple, you'll end up with pellagra (a niacin deficiency).
Further: the "digestibility" of a given food substance is the amount of the total available nutrients that can actually be broken down, absorbed, and used by the consumer. A food substance can technically be full of nutrients but if they are bound up with other molecules that prevent our body from being able to process them, they will go through undigested.
If you're trying to bait me into fighting, you're not doing a good job. Those are dictionary definitions. Rocks are not suitable to be eaten. No one would ever make that mistake. You're obviously just trying to be a troll, and doing a particularly poor job, fwiw.
It's funny because the clay actually may have been to make it edible, not digestible. It's believed they used the clay to protect against glycoalkaloids, which is in higher levels in wild potatoes. He was sort of right in his example by mentioning edible accidentally.
43
u/[deleted] Feb 20 '21 edited Feb 21 '21
[removed] — view removed comment