Corn Bread History

Before Europeans came to the Americas, maize was the only one bread culture. Maize, also known as an Indian corn spread at a record speed across in the warmest parts of Europe. Corn produced much more grain that wheat and gave more calories per hectare than wheat. Europeans learned how to grow the corn properly, so it began to replace traditional crops in Europe. As a result, by 18th century, maize spread around the Europe, especially in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The most important result of transporting the maize from the Americas to Afro-Eurasia is that this crop allowed to use the fallow land. As a result, the food supply increased, which led to the increase of the population. Maize stood alongside with wheat and rice. Corn became a food for poor people, and a great supply pigs and cattle. John Locke claims, “…plots of Maize in several parts, which the country people call Bled d’Espagne, & as they told me, serves poor people for bread… it being good nourishment for their cattle” (Stearns et al. 20). The author states that corn bread was served for the poor people, which had a positive result on the population

Grains such as wheat, rye, barley, oats and rice were shared. Citrus fruits, grapes, onions, cabbage, turnips, cotton, coffee, sugarcane, as well as spices and herbs, were among the many other foods and plants introduced to Native American culture. Also introduced were European religion and culture, new tools for agriculture, and new weaponry such as knives and firearms.

Corn crops were a staple life force in the early cultures of the natives. This caused the natives to cease their early practices of hunting, gathering and moving from place to place. It helped them transform into a more agricultural society. This crop was high in yield which could sustain a large population, therefore contributing to a growth and stability of their civilizations

The history of corn can be dated back to the beginning of time, but the use and value of corn had been unnoticed until it was introduce by the Native Americans. Where corn had seemed to be a big part of their everyday life from, being in myths, legends, and for a huge portion of their diet corn was an essential component. "when the Europeans had touched base to the New World during the late fifteenth century, the Native Americans had introduced corn what they had called maize to the Europeans .This crop was then later on grown and adapted from Canada to southern South America very quickly, which then began to form the new basis of the New World civilization" (Leventin & McManhon, 2012). The way corn has been changing and revolutionizing throughout time has been both fascinating and drastic. Rather than conventional corn being grown, it is genetically modified corn that have been dominating today 's crop industry and farming but the question remains as to how the various types of GMO corn has influenced the way it is grown and used and what its ramification are.

First, the forced cultivation and consumption of corn on the Plains Natives had a negative impact on their health by limiting their diet in comparison to their ancestors. Utilizing Bioarcheology, historians and scientists have been able to examine the

Growing up in Nebraska I can tell you that I have ingested my fair amount of corn and corn-based products, I mean we are the Cornhuskers after all. But what is so special about corn? I ask this question because I want to know what is so special about corn and why is it in almost anything and everything we eat. America's agriculture is vast in the many types of plants that are planted and harvested every year, such as soybeans and wheat that are also used as an ingredient in many of our foods that we consume every day. When trying to answer this question I had to do some of my own investigative work, just as Pollan did when finding out all he could find out about corn. I researched the most grown grains in America, since corn is a grain, and to no surprise, it was corn but the second majorly grown crop that we Americans plant was soybeans. From there I

The Columbian Exchange brought new crops to Europe from the Americas that benefitted the Europeans greatly. The new crops allowed for a higher caloric value and caused the Europeans to adopt American crops. In Document 6 it states “… the people of the Americas realized that crops with higher caloric value could not only feed more people, but also allowed people to work harder because they were more energized” (Document 6). These crops allowed more people to be fed and more labor to be achieved in Europe. In Document 8, it lists the different varieties of crops traded through the Columbian Exchange. One example of such a crop is the potato. Crops like

After the Spanish settled in America, many new foods and species of plants were introduced to the people of Eurasia, none of which they had said before. Although most of the exchange of food was from the New World to the Old World, Eurasia also introduced the America’s to wheat and grapes, two very important foods for mass. Potatoes and corn were a major part of the Columbian Exchange as they provided a lot of nutrition and were very easy to grow. They could grow in soil that was previously useless for agriculture. Other foods that spread across Europe were tomatoes, peppers, chocolate, beans, pineapples, avocados and blueberries. This exchange of food was the main reason that the worlds population doubled from 545,000,000 in 1600 to 1,128,000,000 in 1850 and historians often describe this massive increase in the nutritional value and variety of

Cuisine in Southern literature has become a character in itself that exposes the secrets of the cultured south. “Conversations about food have offered paths to grasp bigger truths about race and identity, gender and ethnicity, subjugation and creativity” (Edge, 2). The historical past of food presents the truth of a South that is often forgotten when discussing the evolution of food. Southern food stems from slavery, agriculture, and traditions of southerners over the centuries. Ralph Ellison uses southern food in the “Invisible Man” to represent the elements of southern food exemplifying its true meanings and associations from history’s past. John T. Edge in “Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South” shares the hardships of the past that have become embedded into the culture of southern cuisine.

i) Corn reached American Southwest by about 1200 B.C. and the Pueblo people in Rio Grande valley constructed irrigation systems, while other places were less developed.

Corn is not the ideal nutritious food. It wreaks havoc on the animal;s' digestive system and gets turned into sweeteners that makes people obese, aside from giving us an unhealthy diet. In other words, the industrial food chain that American man is sustained on is largely based on corn, whether in its direct form, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose, and the cheapest forms of these are high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol. The former, particularly, through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors, appears in the cheapest and most common of foods that constitute the American diet. It is the ingredient that results in obesity, and, since it appears in the cheapest products, the ingredients that more poor, than wealthier individuals, consume.

Agriculture served as the material foundation for the natives. Corn was the heart of this foundation because it was so versatile. In

The Cherokee needed a reliable sources of food and sustenance to grow into the cultural monument of the Native Americans.. Being in the Southeast, the Cherokee had very fertile lands, plentiful hunting, and bountiful fishing. “The economic mainstay of the Southeast Indian was corn. Several varieties were grown, including ‘Little corn’/(related to popcorn); flint, or homing, corn; and flour, or dent, corn” (“Southeast Indian” 1). The corn plant helped give the Cherokee a very reliable food source that supported long travel, trading, and hunting, and it was very easy to farm and grow. Besides the corn plant they also planted beans, squash, and later tobacco once the colonists came to the new world (“Southeast Indian” 1). In addition to farming, the Cherokee hunted, fished, and gathered food. They gathered berries, nuts, seeds, flowers, and other herbs to eat and for medication. “In both salt and fresh waters a wide variety of fish were taken; fishing equipment included weirs, traps, dip nets,

Maize is a wild plant and was discovered by Indians. It belongs to the same grass family as barley, rye, rice, wheat, and oats. When the Pilgrims landed in North America in 1620, the Indians gave them maize to eat. They also showed the Pilgrims how to grow maize. The Pilgrims called the maize “corn”, which mean grains and Americans still call it corn today. The word corn has a different meaning depending on what country you are in. According to the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University, corn in England means wheat and in Scotland and Ireland, it means barley or oats (www.agron.iastate.edu).   By drawing on documents and reports from the Pre Columbian American era, I plan to discuss how corn was discovered, the importance of it, and how it was used by Pre Columbian Americans.

We hypothesize that the cornbread mixture has been genetically modified and therefore will show that in the results.