This is an often asked question Jeanette as corn can be rather confusing.

Corn Grits Vs. Hominy Grits

First, you must consider which kind of grits you are using. There are corn grits and hominy grits. Corn grits are made by simply drying field corn and going a coarse milling on it. Therefore there are no preparations done to it to make it more digestible or to unbind the niacin.

Hominy grits are made by taking field corn and putting it through a nixtimalization process, which is a fancy word to describe the soaking in lime water process (or pootash water). This nixtamilization happens over a few days until the corn swells and the husk is completely sloughed off. The grains are rinsed thoroughly and then dried and coarsely milled.

Are they “real food”?

The nixtamalizing process was traditionally done to unbind niacin in the grain. In poorer communities, when they ate a lot of corn because it was cheap and prevalent, a disease called pellagra occurred, which is a difficiency in niacin. This is not really as much of a concern these days as we eat a more diverse diet. Still, if you want to be able to absorb as many nutrients as possible or if you eat a fair amount of corn I highly recommend consuming nixtamalized corn only.

Also, according to Nourishing Traditions, we should also ferment the corn (aka soak in an acidic medium like raw vinegar or live whey) after nitamalizing in order to make it even more digestible. MANY people I know who consume a real foods diet do not do this last step and believe that the soaking in lime water is plenty since the Native Americans did it this way for hundreds of years.

So are they “real food”? I would personally watch out for GMO corn, which most store-bought is. I buy whole, organic non-GMO corn online and mill it myself to the coarseness I prefer. I also nixtamalize my own dried corn (I do it to whole grains and then process in the food processor to make grits, polenta or tortillas. If you have already ground corn, you can still soak it in lime water and then rinse well and cook). Consuming corn grits in any regularity is probably not the best practice. Store-bought hominy grits would be better since they are treated with lime. Best practice would be to source out organic Non-GMO hominy grits or make your own.

In my opinion, they are, since they are made from the same lime-treated corn that masa is made from.  “Nixtamilization” (sp?) improves the nutritional profile of corn considerably.