this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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This phenomenon is even stronger with (most types of) Maize (excluding sweet corn). It requires heavy processing to be turned into glucose sirup or anything resembling edible food. By default, the grains are extremely durable and very difficult to digest.
But this is essentially what protects it from insects and fungus. Because the grains are so hard to digest by default, they can only be eaten by humans who have the tools to heavily process them before eating; for everyone else it's essentially uninteresting as a food source and that prevents mold and insects.
What type of corn are you referring to? I'm not familiar with the history of corn, but what you're saying doesn't match my experiences with any variety
Dent corn is used as livestock feed, and is generally considered the less edible version. Sweet corn can be eaten by humans raw. Basically every variety I've ever seen can be eaten if boiled long enough
Sweet corn is a mutation that was only really cultivated in the late 1700s. Before that dent and flint corn were the norm. These corns require nixtamalization to soft the corn and then need boiling, grinding, and cooking to make something like tortillas.
Sweet corn is also harder to store if harvested at a flavorful stage. Up until canning became widespread, there was no easy way to store corn without drying it out.
Yeah, the effect is stronger for dent corn.
Source
I'm not sure what that number is for other cereals but i guess it's less long.
Have you not heard of corn on the cob? Just pull off the husk, boil, and eat.
I can't tell if this is in jest or ignorance.
Sweet corn is a recent invention.
And great, you've got the months of July and August covered. How are you going to survive fall, winter, and spring? Corn doesn't become a staple crop until it can be stored year round, maybe between years to alleviate famine.
My point being that corn only needs to be boiled to be easy to eat. Going around like it's completely inedible is ridiculous.
And your second "point" is a complete red herring. It applies to almost any crop outside of its harvest season. Those vegetables you're buying at the grocery store? They're not being stored year round. They're grown in Mexico and South America before being imported. That's how you're able to get tomatoes in March.
Sweet corn harvested at the milky stage, sure. But wait until the kernels are reddish brown and they won't be great. And that's a variety that was developed like 1500 years after the Romans were wiping their asses with sponges, so not relevant to the conversation about ancient prehistoric people developing a staple crop.
Go boil a jar of popcorn and see how practical it would be to try to eat flint corn with just some boiling.
Plus nixtamalization improves the nutrition of cornmeal so that it can meet more of human nutritional needs.
It doesn't apply to staple crops. Wheat, rice, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, beans, and potatoes can be stored long term, so entire civilizations came up around them millennia ago. Sweet corn harvested at an edible stage can't be, at least not without refrigeration or canning technology.
All this is to say yeah, the civilizations built around maize as a staple crop had to figure out nixtamalization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
Corn (Maize) is a selected grass. (Teosinte) Wheat is also a grass (Emmer) which hasn't been nearly as modified.
The american indigenous people cultivated and developed corn over 10,000 some years. An ear of corn can be boiled and eaten. Wheat? Not so much.
You can absolutely boil wheat, so I am not sure I follow....
I guess I meant more along the lines of: "An ear of corn can be husked by hand and boiled." Individual processing is far more accessible and feasible compared the threshing, hulling, and winnowing processes of wheat.