Maca

High in the Peruvian Andes, farmers have cultivated maca for well over two thousand years, coaxing a food crop out of soil and altitude that defeats almost everything else. Indigenous communities traditionally treated the dried root as both staple food and tonic, grinding it into porridge or brewing it into a warming drink to sustain workers through long days of hard labor in the cold, oxygen-thin air. It has traditionally been used to support stamina, fertility, and overall vitality, and Spanish chroniclers in the sixteenth century even noted local farmers feeding it to livestock to improve breeding success. Today it has traveled far from its mountain home, but the root sold in shops still comes largely from the same high plateaus where it has always grown best.