Foods Mexico's Aztecs gave us: chocolate

Still Standing (Business Insider); Unsung History; Vanessa Romo (LAist.com and SCPR.org/NPR.org 10/13/21); Crystal Quintero, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Aztec recipe legacy: Unearthing the xocolatl (chocolate) story | AztecZone.com

Meet the "shaman" using ancient chocolate rituals to revive Mayan traditions

(Still Standing | Business Insider) Oct. 15, 2021: Cacao has been a spiritual symbol for Indigenous people in Mesoamerica and Central America (Olmecs, Maya, and Aztecs) for thousands of years. When the modern European chocolate industry took over, many of the plant's sacred uses were lost. Today, people in Guatemala (the country just south of Mexico) are bringing back the ritual of drinking pure cacao (coffee-like tropical-spice "bitter water"). #StillStanding #Guatemala #Cacao. Both Izaias and Keith sell their cacao online: lavalovecacao.com, keithscacao.com.

Guatemala is interesting because it takes its name from the historical Buddha Gautama and the Indian word for string of beads mala, according to American anthropologist Rick Fields in How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America. The Buddha did not come to America, but Buddhism arrived before Catholicism, Christianity, or Columbus, apparently getting here in various waves, the most famous of which was, according to American Edward P. Vining (1885) by Chinese and Afghan Buddhist missionaries, as documented in the excellent text An Inglorious Columbus.

An Inglorious Columbus; or, Evidence that Hwui Shan and a party of Buddhist monks from Afghanistan Discovered America in the Fifth Century, AD (Edward Payson Vining, 1847-1920)

Mexican moms make it better, from warm corn tortilla wraps to spicy centers to sweet cocoa.

You're taking our hot xocolatl for your cold European climate? Add chile to make it spicy.

Love potatoes, tomatoes, or chocolates? Thank Indigenous Latin American cultures

West addicted to sugar + caffeine

Some of the best tasting foods out there are indigenous to Latin America, but over the centuries they have become associated with imperialist European countries that stole them.

We thought it was time to set the record straight. Mmm...chocolate! It was invented in Mexico, like most other popular American foods.

Television commercials and magazine ads make it seem that the Swiss or Belgians must somehow be connected to the very origins of chocolate, but the caffeine laced treat's history stretches back millennia to what is now southeastern Mexico.

Whites like Wonka invented chocolate, right?

In fact, Smithsonian Magazine reports that the very word stems from the Aztec xocolatl, which referred to the bitter drink brewed from cacao tree seeds that was often mixed with chilis, special herbs, honey, and flowers.

The liquid (now called "hot cocoa") was beaten into a foam and both inhaled and drunk as part of sacred rituals called cacao ceremonies.

(Unsung History) We take the present-day word "chocolate" from the Mayan word xocolatl, which translates to as "bitter water," and that is an accurate description of the traditional and highly popular everyday Mayan cocoa drink. Aztecs added amendments to the theobromine.

Our pyramids and massive cities are still being found by LiDAR under the jungle canopy.

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"Chocolate" comes from these fruit seeds.

It's well documented that the drink has been around for 2,000 years, but anthropologists from the University of Pennsylvania say they have found an even earlier use of cacao — the source of modern day chocolate — somewhere between 1400 and 1100 B.C.E.

Ancient pottery discovered in present day Latin American country Honduras indicates that cultures there made a fermented, alcoholic beverage from the sweet pulp of the cacao fruit.

Add spices and sweetness

"Legend has it that the Aztec King Montezuma welcomed the Spanish explorer [Conquistador] Hernando Cortes with a banquet that included drinking chocolate, having tragically mistaken him for a reincarnated deity [deva] instead of a conquering invader," according to Smithsonian.

It makes sense then that the cacao seed or bean made its first appearance in Spain during the mid-1500s. A century later, sweetened chocolate had become a fashionable and expensive commodity across Europe.

• Potatoes make fries and mash and pancakes and can be baked and stuffed and added to everything!

So many ways to enjoy potatoes with ketchup

We'll be taking the gold, silver, chocolate, tomatoes, and potatoes. Here's a cross for you.

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The all-American French fry in raw form

While the humble and hearty potato is inextricably linked to Ireland in many people's minds, the American tubers were first domesticated in present day Peru and Northern Bolivia nearly 8,000 years ago, according to the BBC.

The Inca and other indigenous people consumed potatoes in many of the same ways we do today. But they also commonly made something called chuño, which is made by repeatedly freezing potatoes in the cold Andes night air then thawing them the next day.

Who wants bland chuño when we have tasty xocolatl?

People would squeeze out all of the moisture, which made them light, soft, and juicy and added years to their shelf life.

The preservation process made them perfect for long expeditions and provided security against future bad harvests — both qualities that appealed to the Spanish upon their invasion in the region in 1532.

Chocolate fruit is better than the fatty seeds.

"The invaders took tubers [the underground parts of the plant we call potatoes] across the Atlantic, as they did with other crops such as tomatoes, avocados, and corn, in what historians call the Great Columbian Exchange. For the first time in history, the potato ventured beyond the Americas," the BBC reports.

Since then, the BBC says, the potato has become the world's fourth-most important crop after [the grains or grass seeds] rice, wheat, and [American] maize, starchy potatoes being the first among non-grains.

On the subject of tomatoes...

Euro-Americans find profitable use for tomatoes

What's Italian food without tomatoes? Yet, like the other foods on this list so far, the thin-skinned fruit (not a vegetable) originated in the Andes Mountains of present-day Peru and Ecuador and is believed to have been domesticated by Mexicans before Columbus, Britannica tells us.

Similarly, the Aztecs would argue that it is neither pronounced \toe-may-toe\ nor \toe-mah-toe\ but rather tomatl.

The Spanish European invaders later translated [taking the -tl at the end of many Aztec words and turning them into -te for the Spanish version or pronunciation of the same words) as tomate as they began exporting the tasty round fruit ball to Europe during the mid-1500s. More

Wait, what about hot chili peppers?

Our space brothers, the "gods" or Star People, helped us find most of these delicacies like Theobroma cacao or cocoa beans to make chocolate.

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They also gave us this cosmic calendar.

To clarify, what we Americans call "chocolate" comes from the Aztec word xocolatl, via the Spanish chocolate (\cho-koh-la-teh\). The Latin binomial of the tree seed used in cocoa is Theobroma cacao, which literally translates as "chocolate, food of the gods." Who were the "gods"? They were devas, visitors from the sky or space (possibly from the hollow earth and Aztlan) coming down and really developing a taste for this sweetened bitter seed. We have to give heaven/space credit.

• The world has potatoes, tomatoes, and chocolates thanks to Indigenous Latin American Cultures | LAist

Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-
American Recipes for Health and Healing

WARNING: According to Dr. Steven Gundry, tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, chiles, eggplants, tobacco, and such plants are nightshades and should be avoided because of the plant lectins they contain.

These are irritants to the body, as the plant uses them to protect itself from consumption. The worst plant lectin is gluten found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, and buckwheat (which contain avenin, gliadin, and fagopyrins that are even more detrimental than wheat gluten, a gluey protein that wipes out the cilia in the intestinal tract and leads to malabsorption of food, skin irritation, and uncomfortable problems. (See criticalhealthnews.com and the work of Dr. Joel Wallach). One need not have celiac disease to be harmed by gluten. In fact, the gluten problem is much worse for everybody now due to Big Agra (industrial agriculture) breeding plants with more and more gluten, which is a squishy and binding in ways our mouths have been made to crave.

Even corn is not what it used to be. It was regarded as a famine food and, back then, was much smaller and much more natural. It is now a Frankenfood due to the meddling of American corporations like Monsanto and Bayer Pharmaceuticals. Many of these foods are high in starch, which is quickly converted into sugar leading to diabetic problems. It is far better to decolonize the diet to pre-Columbian days, when the Indigenous people were largely vegetarian and vegan and living in mythical Fusang, having come from the hollow earth world of Aztlan. This is a good book for popular California pre-Spanish foods. Eat in moderation, move your body regularly (yoga, walking, swimming), and find the real plants the Native Americans ate: amaranth, raw agave, medicinal and culinary herbs, quinoa, purslane (verdolagas), the Three Sisters using various corn plants of other colors, and so on. More than anything, enjoy it.