For thousands of years, wheat and corn have competed without actually meeting. Wheat built civilizations across Eurasia and North Africa. Corn—or, more properly, maize—did much the same across the Americas. One gave us bread, chapati, pasta and noodles; the other tortillas, tamales, polenta and porridge. Then global trade brought the two together. Over the years wheat gained ground, and corn had a disturbing nutritional history. But today, in a twist of fortunes, wheat’s advantage has become its folly, and corn is hailed as more healthy.
Two grains, two civilizations
Wheat is one of humanity’s oldest domesticated crops. Its story begins roughly 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, where early farmers gradually domesticated wild einkorn and emmer wheat. Corn’s story unfolded independently on the other side of the planet. Indigenous farmers in what is now Mexico began selecting teosinte roughly 9,000 years ago, gradually transforming a grass with tiny, hard seed cases into the large-eared maize familiar today. Genetic and archaeological evidence points particularly towards southwestern Mexico.
By the time Europeans reached the Americas, maize was deeply embedded in the agriculture, cuisine and culture of civilizations stretching across much of the New World. Then came the Colombian Exchange. Corn traveled east across the Atlantic. Wheat traveled west. Both conquered new territories.
Corn’s old nutritional scandal
The strangest chapter in this story began when Europeans enthusiastically adopted maize but failed to adopt the technology that traditionally accompanied it. Mesoamerican cultures commonly processed maize by cooking it with an alkaline substance such as lime—a process now called nixtamalization. It improves the handling characteristics of maize and, importantly, increases the availability of niacin.
Populations surviving predominantly on inadequately processed maize became vulnerable to pellagra, a devastating nutritional deficiency associated with inadequate available niacin. Pellagra’s classic manifestations became known as the “four Ds”: dermatitis, diarrhoea, dementia and death.
The problem became particularly severe among impoverished populations of Europe, Africa and the American South. Between 1906 and 1940, approximately three million cases and 100,000 deaths in the United States were attributed to pellagra. American Physician Joseph Goldberger eventually demonstrated that pellagra was fundamentally associated with diet and poverty rather than an infectious organism. Corn had acquired its first major nutritional image problem.
Re-invention of corn breakfast
At the end of the nineteenth century, John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg were experimenting with grain foods at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. While their first experiments involved wheat, eventually they discovered that cooked corn could also be rolled into flakes and toasted. In the 1890s the corn flake emerged, originally conceived not as confectionery but as an easily digested health food for patients.
This is one of the great paradoxes in food history. Kellogg deliberately processed grain to make it easier to digest. Further, they made it more sweet to the tongue. A health food could become a mass-market product if people actually enjoyed eating it. Sugar and salt helped. The breakfast cereal industry was born. Within a few decades, a grain once associated in parts of the Western world with poverty and pellagra had become a shiny packaged symbol of modernity, cleanliness, convenience and health.
This was quite opposite to current nutritional thinking. Refined corn-flakes have less fiber, and more sugar. Today faster digestion is looked down upon. None-the-less corn cereals brought beleaguered corn to the breakfast table. Marketing had accomplished what agriculture alone never could.
Wheat’s strength becomes its weakness
Wheat has a unique property. Mix its flour with water and its proteins form an elastic network capable of trapping gas. Dough could therefore be stretched, kneaded and fermented into bread. This defining property of wheat is because of gluten, a characteristic that made it spectacularly successful.
Gluten is not an artificial additive. It is a group of proteins naturally present in wheat and related grains. Some people have celiac disease, an immune-mediated disorder where gluten damages our intestines. Some more are gluten sensitive, and exhibit wheat allergies. While their numbers are small, gluten-free has become a fad. As corn happens to be naturally gluten-free, the pendulum had swung again. This has created a “health halo.” Consumers often assume that gluten-free products are automatically healthier.
Compare and contrast
History suggests caution whenever one ancient food is suddenly declared virtuous and another becomes a villain. For most of human history these two grains did not even know each other existed. After Columbus, both have become part of our meal plates. As maize and spread through Europe, Africa and Asia, farmers discovered that maize could produce substantial amounts of food and thrive in environments where established crops were less productive. Africa would eventually embrace maize so enthusiastically that today it is difficult to imagine many African cuisines without it.
Our food plates do-not always remain the same. While most of it is tradition, but what we eat also depends on perceptions of what is good and healthy, and marketing what makes some foods more attractive as compared to others. What we know from history is that only one type of food has its follies, and mixing all types optimally is what makes our plates healthy, and our palates to relish them.
