Cultural Ignorance: Lost Indigenous Recipe Could Have Prevented Pellagra Epidemic

"Tending the Wild: Decolonizing the Diet": This video shows other indigenous foods and recipes, while exploring the cultural importance of Native food practices.

Cultural Ignorance: Lost Indigenous Recipe Could Have Prevented Pellagra Epidemic



In partnership with Southern Foodways Alliance: The Southern Foodways Alliance documents, studies and explores the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. Our work sets a welcome table where all may consider our history and our future in a spirit of respect and reconciliation.



In the 19th-century rural South, sharecroppers grew it, sold it, ate it, and became sick — all because of a lost recipe.

Ancient farmers domesticated corn, or maize, about 9,000 years ago in the Rio Balsas River region of present-day Mexico. From there, dried kernels made their way along ancient trade routes to other locales in Mesoamerica, Central America, and eventually North America. Corn was easy to grow and produced a high yield. Eventually, entire communities flourished alongside maize crops. Corn traveled to Europe in the post-Columbus world and spread across the continent.


When early European colonists arrived in North America, Native peoples, especially the Iroquois, taught them how to farm and prepare corn. An essential step in the preparation of corn is nixtamalization, which liberates the chemical compounds niacin and tryptophan and makes them bioavailable. While we do not know exactly when ancient Mesoamericans developed this method, the earliest culinary equipment associated with the process dates to approximately 3,200 years ago. Real and long-lasting problems arose when corn became a commodity crop as early as the 1700s in Europe. In the 19th-century rural South, sharecroppers grew it, sold it, ate it, and became sick — all because of a lost recipe.
Centuries earlier, the indigenous populations of North America had successfully adopted maize culture and preparation from Central America. Yet the process of nixtamalization was left behind when corn crossed the Atlantic. European farmers were seemingly unaware of this essential step. Their ignorance of nixtamalization severely impacted the American colonies. Corn-dependent populations in both Europe and North America suffered from pellagra, a chronic niacin deficiency that brings on four progressively catastrophic “Ds”: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. The human body uses niacin, or vitamin B3, to control blood sugar, process fats, maintain healthy skin, and make new DNA. Early symptoms of pellagra include loss of appetite, irritability, and vomiting, followed by inflammation of the mouth and tongue and a scaly red rash on the hands and neck.



Gaspar Casal, a Spanish physician, first diagnosed pellagra in 1735. The disease also showed up in 18th-century Italy — its English name likely derives from the Italian pelle agra, meaning “rough skin.” Two centuries later, pellagra reached epidemic proportions in the American South. It afflicted rural poor sharecroppers, orphans, mental-hospital patients, and those living in coal-mining camps and cotton-mill towns. These populations often lacked fresh meats and produce, leaving them with an unvaried diet based on cornmeal. An agricultural invention from the turn of the 20th century unintentionally hastened the spread of pellagra. John Beall of Decautur, Illinois, patented the Beall degerminator in the United States in 1901. Degerming corn reduces processing time but lowers its niacin content. (Today, the machine is still used to dry-mill 90 percent of all corn globally.)

In 1914, the U.S. government tasked Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a Hungarian-born infectious disease specialist, with determining the cause of the pellagra epidemic. He proposed that pellagra was a dietary disease and not one caused by germs. The following year, Goldberger conducted an experiment on twelve prisoners at the Rankin State Prison Farm in Mississippi. The men ate only corn and corn-based foods: likely cornbread, grits, and fresh corn. Within six months, more than half of them had developed symptoms. When they returned to a diet that included fresh meat, the symptoms disappeared. (Unlike the victims of the infamous Tuskegee syphillis study, these prisoners knew about the experiment and negotiated pardons from Governor Early Brewer in return for their participation.)

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