postman
Member
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2016
- Messages
- 1,284
So what's the real level of fat content of masa harina you can buy? Without that knowledge this is relatively meaningless, unless you make your own masa harina, which I don't think a lot of people do.That's how soap is made.
I don't know which masa harina products you've seen, or how they are manufactured, but they may not list the nutritional information accurately (it may reflect the whole corn pre-alkali treatment) or they may not produce the product in an ideal way (they speed it up, for example, to produce flour more quickly). The amount of saponification that takes place depends on the amount of lime or lye that is used, how long the solution is cooked and the amount of time the corn is left to steep. Something that the researchers who study the effects of nixtamalization may not take into consideration is the type of corn used. Different varieties have different characteristics that will affect the process, like the hardness of the endosperm. Dent corn, which is a more modern variety, would need to steep longer than something like one of the traditional flint corn varieties. I am guessing most companies that manufacture masa harina flour would use some variety of dent corn as it is more common and cheaper. Dent corn would not have been used traditionally as it was only 'invented' in the mid 1800's whereas flint varieties have been around for 1000's of years.
Interestingly calcium prevents the formation of acrylamide, so if the flour is made in such a way as to provide a high calcium content then tortilla chips made from this flour would contain significantly less acrylamide than tortilla chips made from a low calcium flour.