Dent corn takes its name from the dent that develops in the end of the kernel at maturity. As the corn seed dries, soft starch in the kernel compacts and the outer hull dents. Most of the corn grown in the United States belongs to the dent group, which includes yellow dent corn, most often used for animal feed, and white dent corn grown for the food industry. Dent corn requires special processing for human consumption.
Nutritional Content
Starch accounts for 61 percent of the average dent corn kernel. Typical dent corn varieties yield kernels with only about 8 percent protein, in the form of zein. Crude fiber makes up 11.2 percent of the kernel. One cup of yellow dent corn contains about 10 percent of your daily requirement of vitamin A, but white dent corn provides only 0.5 percent. Both types provide useful amounts of vitamin B and E, as well as vitamin C. Dent corn also contains moderate levels of potassium, phosphorous, and magnesium, plus small amounts of other important minerals. Corn oil makes up 3.8 percent of the dent corn kernel.
Protein Quality
If you live almost exclusively on freshly ground cornmeal from unprocessed dent corn, you could develop nutritional protein deficiencies. Corn protein provides very little lysine or tryptophan, amino acids essential for the creation of human protein. Dent corn also provides less protein than some other corn types. On a typical Western diet, you would not develop protein deficiency by eating dent corn, since other protein sources easily make up for the missing nutrients. Opague-2 corn, discovered at Purdue University in 1963, provides a more balanced protein equal in quality to milk. Most Opague-2 corn growers in the United States use the harvest for animal feed.
Niacin Problems
Dent corn, like other types of corn, contains niacin in a form your body can't use. Depending on unprocessed dent corn for your niacin supply causes pellagra, a nutritional deficiency once common in the American South. Pellagra symptoms include confusion and delusion, diarrhea, and skin sores. Although Southerners in the 1930s often suffered from pellagra, American Indians subsisted on corn for generations without problems. To remove the inedible dent corn husks or to create a better texture of meal for tortillas, American Indians treated the corn with wood ashes. Potassium hydroxide in the wood ashes converts the unusable niacin to a form you can digest.
Home Preparation
Commercial corn processors often use caustic lye to process corn. You should choose a safer alternative for home processing, since sodium hydroxide reacts violently with water and could cause severe burns. Boiling dent corn in pickling lime and water loosens hulls, and an overnight soaking converts the niacin to its digestible form. Dried and ground, you could use treated dent corn hominy to make tortillas. If you grind the untreated corn in a home mill, you create flavorful corn meal with higher nutritional values than commercial cornmeal. Commercial mills remove both pericarp and germ before grinding, eliminating fiber and oil from the mix. Whole corn meal spoils quickly, but you can store it frozen or simply grind it as needed.
References
- University of Minnesota: Corn Milling, Processing and Generation of Co-products; Kelly S. Davis; September 11, 2001
- New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service: Nutritional Analysis of New Mexico Blue Corn and Dent Corn Kernels; George W. Dickerson; February 2008
- Purdue University; Corn -- Notes; David Rhodes; January 7, 2008
- "The Journal of Nutrition"; Protein Nutritional Value of Opague-2 Corn Grain for Human Adults; Constance Kies, et al.
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