techniki: Mexican cuisine

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Mexican cuisine consists of the food traditions of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Mexican cuisine's ingredients and methods arise from the area's first agricultural communities, such as those of the Olmec and Maya, who domesticated maize, created the standard process of nixtamalization, and established foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their cooking methods. These included the Teotihuacanos, Toltec, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac, Mazatec, Mazahua, and Nahua. With the Mexica formation of the multi-ethnic Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire), culinary foodways became infused (Aztec cuisine). Today's food staples…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 72

Indigenous cuisine of the Americas includes all cuisines and food practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Contemporary native peoples retain a varied culture of traditional foods, along with the addition of some post-contact foods that have become customary and even iconic of present-day Indigenous American social gatherings (e.g. frybread). Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, blueberry, hominy, and mush have been adopted into the cuisine of the broader United States population from Native American cultures. In other cases, documents from the early periods of Indigenous American contact with European, African, and Asian peoples have allowed the recovery and revitalization…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 92

Nutrition security under constraint: food shopping, cooking, and structural barriers among Mexican immigrants in the Bronx, NYC.. Questions remain regarding how Mexican immigrants achieve nutrition security in the United States, particularly under poverty and in the wake of COVID-19. We employed creative qualitative methods (food maps, ethnographic interviews, photo and shopping receipt elicitation) during one food shopping and cooking event with 12 Spanish-dominant Mexican immigrants in the Bronx, New York. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we found that participants accessed food through a mosaic of venues - supermarkets, ethnic tiendas, live poultry and meat markets, and big-box stores.…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 92

Beyond conventional metrics: a scoping review of cultural food security definitions and indicators for migrant populations.. Introduction The ability to reliably access, afford, or obtain foods that are culturally significant, familiar, and aligned with one's identity, foodways, religious beliefs, and the sociocultural preferences is an important aspect of food and nutrition security in immigrant communities. This is because access to culturally appropriate food is crucial for maintaining perceived healthy dietary and nutritional practices, finding comfort, and growing a sense of place. However, the existing food security measurement scales have been criticized for their limited ability to…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 92

The sleeping crops of eastern North America: a new synthesis.. Indigenous peoples in eastern North America domesticated a diverse group of annual crops. Several of these crops fell out of cultivation around the time of European colonization, and their domesticated forms are known only from the archaeological record. These crops have previously been characterized as lost , but in the context of a renaissance in Indigenous agriculture in this region, they are perhaps better understood as sleeping : this ancient agricultural system and its myriad ecosystem interactions could be reawakened. I briefly review the history of research on native eastern North American crops, and then synthesize rece…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 72

Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, bordering the United States of America to the north and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast, while having maritime boundaries with the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Caribbean Sea to the southeast, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. Mexico covers 1,972,550 km2 (761,610 sq mi), and is the thirteenth-largest country in the world by land area. With a population around 131 million as of 2025, Mexico is the tenth-most populous country in the world and is home to the largest number of native Spanish speakers. Mexico City is the capital and largest city in Mexico, which…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 72

Maize (; Zea mays), also known as corn, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to male inflorescences or tassels which produce pollen, and female inflorescences called ears. The ears yield grain, known as kernels or seeds. In modern commercial varieties, these are usually yellow or white; other varieties can be of many colors. Maize was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native Americans planted it alongside beans and squashes in the Three Sisters polyculture. Maize relies on humans for its propagation. Since the Columbian exchange, it has become a staple food in many parts of the…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 80

Maize and Blood: Mesoamerican Symbolism on an Olmec Vase and a Maya Plate

Evidence: 35 • authority: 88

The Olmec and Maya. The Olmec and Maya civilizations stretched from present-day Honduras to central Mexico and along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. The Olmec civilization and successor cultures—which took shape and flourished during the Preclassic, or Formative, Period of Mesoamerican history (ca. 1200–ca. 400 BCE)—were centered in the present-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.