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The traditional food preparation method of corn (maize), nixtamalization, by native New World cultivators who had domesticated corn required treatment of the grain with lime, an alkali. The lime treatment makes niacin nutritionally available and reduces the chance of developing pellagra. Pellagra was once endemic in the poorer states of the US South, like Mississippi and Alabama because it was not nixtamalized and the populations who ate corn in such places developed a severe deficiency of niacin.

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15y ago

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