© 2024 Utah Public Radio
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Programs
Three books lean against a black pot. Below, an herb and two cloves of garlic sit. Text reads, "Eating the Past."
Eating the Past

Eating the Past: Iowa corn

By Jamie Sanders
Published September 3, 2023 at 10:00 AM MDT
Corn on the cob
1195798, Photographer

/
Pixabay

Iowa might be about the best place on earth to grow corn but it was not domesticated there. Corn was not a crop already existing in nature that people slightly modified. Humans created it about 9,000 years ago far to the south of Iowa in the highlands of Mexico.

Tags
Eating the Past local foodcornCropsMexicoUPR
Jamie Sanders
Jamie Sanders is a historian of Latin America at Utah State and his family’s cook. He grew up in the rural South and loves its regional cuisine, but a study abroad trip to the Yucatán when he was a teenager really awakened him to international food culture.
See stories by Jamie Sanders
Related Content