This article contains Cherokee syllabic characters. You can help by adding to it. The process of nixtamalization has been fundamental to Fufu powder cuisine since ancient times.
The lime used to treat the maize can be obtained from several different materials. Hominy is made in a process called nixtamalization. Fresh masa that has been dried and powdered is called masa seca or masa harina. However, further advancements showed that it is a correlational, not causal, relationship. In the 1700s and 1800s, areas that depended highly on corn as a diet staple were more likely to have pellagra. This is because humans cannot absorb niacin in untreated corn.
In Mexican cuisine, people cook masa nixtamalera with water and milk to make a thick, gruel-like beverage called atole. When they make it with chocolate and sugar, it becomes atole de chocolate. In Latin America there are a variety of dishes referred to as mote. Rockihominy, a popular trail food in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is dried corn, roasted to a golden brown, then ground to a very coarse meal, almost like hominy grits. Hominy is also used as animal feed. Look up hominy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.