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#89364 12/12/02 08:17 PM
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In "engines" episode # 1471 the failure of the first settlement at Jamestown is ascribed
to malnutrition caused by tryptophan deficiency in maize.
I think the guy that wrote that book didn't do his homework. The Indians everywhere
grew maize and beans together. The two make a well balanced diet, as far as having all
the important amino acids is concerned.
I feel certain that when the Jamestown people got maize seed to plant, they also got
beans to plant, though I can find nothing on Internet to that effect.
At Plymouth, a couple years before the Pilgrims landed,the Indians in the vicinity had lost
nine tenths of their numbers, presumably from an infection brought by European fishermen.
They were not strong enough to fight the Pilgrims. In addition, an Indian who learmed tp speak
English because he had been kidnapped and taken to England (by one Thomas Hunt -( no relation,
I assure you ) and been allowed toreturn taught the colonists how to raise corn. It was to be
planted when "the leaves on the white oak were the size of a mouse's ear" . And beneath it
was to be put a herring (alewife) as fertillizer. The Indians had in many places weirs for trapping
the fish in the rivers when they came quite early to spawn.
I have never heard of herring being available in the Jamestown area. This would have meant that
the Jamestown people had little or nothing for fertilizer for the maize, which could have greatly
reduced yield, and contributed to severe food shortage.
Wordwind, and comments?


#89365 12/12/02 08:43 PM
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Got a question for you, Dr. Bill. What is "engines"?

All I have to contribute for the moment is that turkey is full of triptophane.

And yes, corn, beans and squash, as Faldage reminds me, were known among the natives as "the three sisters."


#89366 12/12/02 09:04 PM
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Dear AS: A wonderful engineer at the University of Houston has had a weekly radio program
about science and engineering. I am now up to episode # 1746. Here is the URL. You can edit
the episode number in the Location Box to get back to the beginning. They are short, and I have
learned something from; every one of them. And, mirabile dictu, he is no chauvinist male pig.
He has had many, many episodes about important women scientists I never heard of before.
This latest one is about a socialite lady who go tired of servants ruining her heirloom china,
invented and marketed the first dishwashing machine.
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1476.htm


#89367 12/13/02 04:27 PM
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actually, maize is not really deficent in tryptophan -- its just the amino acid is locked up, and can't be metabolized unless first treated. the most common way to treat it, is with an a (no dictionary handy and brain dead) a "Base" -- such as lye, (sodium hydroxide) or sodium bicarbonate, or the like.

homey or samp or the blue corn meal of the Hopi indians has all been treated this way.(untreated blue corn will turn yellow when cooked, to keep it blue, you must add a "base".)

Most of the american indians used wood ashes to treat the corn, and the idea of adding wood ashes was so foreign to europeans, they just didn't do it for years! (and then they tended to soak the corn in lye, to make hominy, rather than add wood ashes to a corn meal batter, and then use the batter to make corn cakes.)

Europeans persisted in trying to make corn bread with yeast, (and since corn does haven't a lot of gluten, and doesn't make the same kind of dough, it doesn't really work with yeast.) it wasn't till after the civil war, with commercial produced baking soda that "quick" corn pone as we now know it became popular. (i read a book about Corn a few months ago, and know more that any one could want about the subject!)

adding beans or meat to the diet will also work, but treated corn is the easiest way to increase the nutrition.


#89368 12/13/02 04:33 PM
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the most common way to treat it, is with an a (no dictionary handy and brain dead) a "Base" -- such as lye, (sodium hydroxide) or sodium bicarbonate, or the like.


an alkili (pronounced "al'-kill-eye") is the word you were blocking, I think.

Is that where the name "lye" came from in the first place, I wonder?


#89369 12/13/02 04:39 PM
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the amino acid is locked up

I had heard, in an anthro class, that there's something in chilis that helps us utilize the amino acids in corn and beans. But last time I checked chilis were acidic. Is this something else going on?


#89370 12/13/02 04:54 PM
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" -- its just the amino acid is locked up, and can't be metabolized unless first treated. the most common way to treat it, is with an a (no dictionary handy and brain dead) a "Base" -- such as lye, (sodium hydroxide) or sodium bicarbonate, or the like."

Does calcium carbonate fall into this category?


#89371 12/13/02 05:20 PM
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At least nobody seem to agree with the author of the book in thinking that the Jamestown
colonists died becauise of a deficiency disease. On another thread here I learned that Mexicans
and other South Americans enhance nutrive value of corn by treatment with alkali in small amounts.
I wonder how they learned the value of this, because it takes so long for the benefits to become
apparent. Look how long it took for Europeans to learn how to avoid scurvy.


#89372 12/13/02 06:52 PM
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Doesn't 'base' mean 'alkili'? (damn, that word looks weird)

edit: No wonder. It's "alkali."

#89373 12/13/02 07:13 PM
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You're thinking of al-qaida. Close but

that word looks weird

And well it might. Does it look any better as alkali? It's from Arabic al-qily, the ashes.




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