Foods and Their Adulteration / Origin, Manufacture, and Composition of Food Products; Description of Common Adulterations, Food Standards, and National Food Laws and Regulations Papyras Classics

← Foods and Their Adulteration / Origin, Manufacture, and Composition of Food Products; Description of Common Adulterations, Food Standards, and National Food Laws and Regulations

Chapter 45

Indian Corn ( Zea mays )

Next to wheat the most important cereal used as a human food in the United States is Indian corn. According to the magnitude of the crop, Indian corn is the leading cereal of the country. Statistical data on the production of Indian corn in the United States during 1906 are given in the following table:

Acreage, 96,737,581

Yield per acre, 30.3 bushels

Production, 2,927,416,091 „

Value per bushel, 39.9 cents

Total value, 1,166,626,479 dollars

Indian corn

is universally employed as food throughout all parts of the country, but more especially in the South, where the daily dietary is rarely complete without one or more meals in which Indian corn is served in some form or other. Although it is grown much more extensively in the North than in the South, it is not so generally used as human food. Indian corn grows in all kinds of soil and produces, under favorable conditions, large yields in all parts of the country. It is the most important agricultural crop of many states, namely, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. It is planted in the late winter and spring in different parts of the country. The planting season varies from January in Florida to June in Maine and Minnesota and the earlier varieties will mature in 120 days.

Maize

is a crop which requires an abundance of rainfall and a high temperature during the growing season. Maize is planted in rows about three and one-half feet apart and in hills of about the same distance apart, or it may be drilled between the rows so that one stalk grows a distance of about from nine inches to a foot from its fellows. It requires constant cultivation during the early period of its growth and a careful preparation of the seed bed. Good farmers give from four to seven cultivations to the growing crop. The field must be kept free of weeds and in good tilth to secure the best results.

Many hundreds of analyses of the maize kernel have been made, but a combination of them all in the following data may be regarded as typical of the Indian corn grown in this country.

Weight of 100 kernels, 38 grams

Moisture, 10.75 percent

Ether extract, 4.25 „

Protein, 10.00 „

Fiber, 1.75 „

Ash, 1.50 „

Starch and sugar, etc., 71.75 „

The consideration of the above data shows that Indian corn is a ration in which the protein is rather low. In other words, the ratio of protein to the carbohydrates and fat is rather large. It is a food product which is particularly well suited to furnish heat and energy and support a high degree of muscular exertion. For this reason it is a food product which is particularly well adapted to men engaged in hard manual labor.

Varieties.

—There are many distinct varieties of Indian corn. Sturtevant has published a description of several hundred. These varieties are classified under various subspecies. The polymorphic species, Zea mays, according to Sturtevant, can be divided into a number of groups which, on account of their well defined and persistent characters, may be considered as presenting specific claims and may properly receive specific nomenclature. The grouping adopted is founded upon the internal structure of the kernel for cultivated varieties, and the presence of a husk to the kernel in the assumed aboriginal form. Hence Sturtevant offers the names Zea tunicata for the husk-kernel forms, Zea everta for the popcorn, Zea indurata for the flint corns, Zea indentata for the dent corns, Zea amylacea for the soft corns, and Zea saccharata for the sweet corns.

Argument in favor of the specific claims for these groups is based primarily on the convenience thus attained; secondarily, on the absence or rarity of intermediate or connecting forms, so far as present data extend, and also on the antiquity of the separation. It seems almost certain that in the order of evolution (excluding from consideration the puzzling sweet corn group) progress has been from the pops, through the flints and the dents, to the softs. Certainly the soft corns in some of their varieties present a kernel that is larger, softer, and less fitted to the struggle with natural conditions than is the kernel from any of the other groups. Yet soft corns are the prevailing form in the mummy burials of Peru and of our Southwestern states. The popcorn, on the contrary, has stronger regerminative powers than have the other groups, is better fitted to contend against natural vicissitudes, and is the kind that has been reported as found growing wild in Mexico under the name of Coyote corn, Zea canina Watts.

Some of these subdivisions may not be accepted by botanists, but they are convenient for purposes of description. The principal field varieties which are grown are the flint corn, Zea indurata, and the dent corn, Zea indentata.