page_title: Aztec cuisine
section_title: Foods
hierarchical_section_title: Aztec cuisine / Foods
context_page_description: Aztec cuisine is the cuisine of the former Aztec Empire and the Nahua peoples of the Valley of Mexico prior to European contact in 1519.
  The most important staple was corn, a crop that was so important to Aztec society that it played a central part in their mythology. Just like wheat in much of Europe or rice in most of East Asia, it was the food without which a meal was not a meal. It came in varieties that differed in color, texture, size and prestige, and was eaten as corn tortillas, tamales or ātōlli, maize gruel. The other constants of Aztec food were salt and chili peppers and the basic definition of Aztec fasting was to abstain from these two flavors.
  The other major foods were beans, squash and New World varieties of the grains amaranth, and chia. The combination of maize and these basic foods would have provided the average Aztec a very well-rounded diet without any significant deficiencies in vitamins or minerals. The cooking of maize grains in alkaline solutions, a process called nixtamalization, significantly raised the nutritional value of the common staple.
context_section_description: Aztec staple foods included maize, beans and squash to which were often added chilis, nopales and tomatoes, all prominent parts of the Mexican diet to this day. They harvested acocils, a small and abundant crayfish of Lake Texcoco, as well as Spirulina algae, which was made into a sort of cake called tecuitlatl and was rich in flavonoids. Although the Aztecs' diet was mostly vegetarian, the Aztecs consumed insects such as grasshoppers chapulín [t͡ʃaˈpolin] (singular) or chapulines [t͡ʃapoˈlimeʔ] (plural), maguey worm, ants, larvae, etc. Insects have a higher protein content than meat, and even now they are considered a delicacy in some parts of Mexico.
caption: Spirulina could be harvested off the surface of lakes with nets or shovels and was then dried as cakes which could be eaten with corn tortilla or as a condiment.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:05:26 13:54:23", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3896", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "883", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "296"}