But they are also no less a part of Mexican culinary heritage than chiles or maize.
Breakfast is usually corn or maize porridge, possibly a boiled egg and sour yoghurt, with perhaps powdered milk for children.
Corn, or maize, a cereal cultivated in most warm areas of the world, has many varieties.
In the decisions, the environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, contends that the genetically modified corn, or maize could affect certain butterfly species, specifically the monarch, and other beneficial insects.
Before the voyages of Columbus, there were no tomatoes, chillies, potatoes, beans except for broad beans, pumpkins, courgettes or maize, though maize caught on rapidly.
As they age, plantations become better for biodiversity," Ewers says, especially in comparison with a landscape of intensive soy or maize production in Brazil.
Barbecue in America, particularly in the American South, is like red wine in Bordeaux or maize in Mexico.
When they arrive at around 7.30am, they get tea and rice or maize porridge which allows them to learn their ABC and do a few sums without the familiar, distracting cramps of hunger.
Maize can also be de-tasselled by hand to remove the pollen-producing tassels, or maize breeders could potentially select for different pollen shedding patterns in their breeding strategies.
These days I can rarely afford to travel to faraway places, but walking through those narrow, hayfever-inducing hedges (or maize fields) gives me the same thrill of discovery.
