Zea Mays Everta

That's corn turned inside out to you....yup, popcorn! With Americans consuming 4.25 billion gallons of popcorn per year as well as producing around half of the world's annual popcorn supply (around 300 million tons), it is no small surprise that popcorn has an incredibly long and fascinating cultural history.  Although National Popcorn Poppin Month isn't until October, it never hurts to be prepared...

Despite massive google-efforts, my attempts to discover the hidden roots of my personal popcorn obsession have been relatively unsuccessful.  My grandmother's popcorn song seems to have been an invention all her own, or at least an obscure and unpublished folk ditty that has yet to make its viral debut:
"Poppity poppity poppity pop, somehow I never can stop.
Whenever they put me over the fire it seems like I have to jump higher and higher,
And that's why I leap and pop!"
Vivid memories dancing anxiously in front of the stove spring to mind, complete with the willful leapings of enthusiastic kernels as the patented scent of snack-time deliciousness fills the room.

In fact, popcorn (like baking bread or tortillas) contains an aroma compound (released by chemical reactions during the heating process) that is especially attractive to human beings...and you thought that whole subliminal marketing thing was merely a conspiracy theory.  Since the advent of the mobile popcorn cart 1885 by Charles Cretors (a Chicago based confectioner), clever use of the wafting scents of popping corn have been attracting customers to street corners, fairs, circuses, and of course, the movies.

You don't like feeling manipulated by large corporations taking your money while you wolf down synthetically-buttered snacks salted to a threshold requiring refreshments?  Neither do I.  Popcorn wasn't always a tool of corporate capitalism.  For thousands of years before those pesky European explorers got their hands on it, popcorn was a dietary and religiously significant aspect for the majority of ancient civilizations in the Americas. 

Corn, believed to be indigenous to Mesoamerica, formed one third of the dietary trifecta of the majority of Central and Latin American peoples (the other two thirds being beans and squash).  With such an important role in the indigenous diet, it is no wonder that corn was represented in religion as well.  The Olmec, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec all worshipped gods of corn, and we know that corn played a roll in Native American and South American (particularly Peruvian) indigenous societies as well.  During the conquest of Mexico in the early 1500s, Hernan Cortes noted popcorn's use in Aztec ceremonies honoring the god Tlaloc.  Uses included headdresses, garlands and necklaces, and symbolic ornaments in adittion to dietary supplement.

We've come a long way from revering popcorn--although we still see remnants today on a lesser scale (popcorn balls at Christmas?) we've lost any sense of sanctity or respect for the grain.  Popcorn today is more a vehicle for ulterior motivations (including government agricultural policy as well as private interests) than a representation of sacred meanings or cultural truths.  Check out this article about a woman suing ConAgra because of health complications from inhaling the chemical additives in their microwave popcorn. 

However we eat it--buttered, candied, salted, or my personal favorite, spiked with a healthy dose of pepperoncinis--popcorn has been a part of our continental heritage since the beginnings of civilization.  Arguably one of Mesoamerica's most enduring gifts, popcorn has been a staple from the "first Thanksgiving" (don't even get me started on the Thanksgiving myth--invented during the Civil War to unify the country...although it is said the Wampanoag Indians gave gifts of popcorn to the settlers), through good times and bad (popcorn was immensely popular during the Depression and WWII as a cheap luxury), and continues to gain popularity around the world today--a street food, a holiday treat, a night-out snack, popcorn is one of the great universally appealing foods.

Read more!!  On Mesoamerican contributions to the world's food supply see Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, on popcorn in the U.S. see Andrew F. Smith's Popped Culture