New World Foods Reading Answers

When you think of all the foods we eat today that had their origin in the Americas, there are so many it is hard to imagine what people ate before 1492 when Christopher Columbus made his famous journey. Here are some of the foods that have made such a difference to the variety of our diets today. The avocado originated in what is now modern Mexico, and though is now popular all over the world, about half the world's commercial production still occurs there. It has long been cultivated all over Central America with the earliest evidence found in Peru, dating from 5,000 BC, but the wild fruit was being consumed in Mexico as far back as 10,000 years ago. The original Nahuatl word (the Aztec language) was ahuacati, and the Spanish aguacate is probably a version of this. It was introduced to Spain in 1601, and later to tropical climate countries for cultivation, such as Indonesia, Mauritius and Brazil, where it still flourishes today. 

When it was first mentioned in English in 1696 by naturalist and physician Sir Hans Sloane, he called it avocado. (Incidentally, Sloane also introduced chocolate to the

British). The avocado was cultivated worldwide but it was not until the 1960s when Mexican food became popular, that people started buying avocados to make the dip guacamole, and then sales really took off. Maize (or corn in North America), is one of the oldest domesticated crops in South America, and has been cultivated for at least 11,000 years It is now grown everywhere and by weight it is the most cultivated food in the world. The word maize comes from mahiz from the native Caribbean language, Taino. Maize was one of the earliest South American foods cultivated in Spain after Columbus and quickly spread to Italy, West Africa, and the rest of the world as it can be grown in many different climates. Of the maize grown in North America today, 85 per cent of it is genetically modified. The earliest cultivation of peanuts seems to have been in Peru over 7,000 years ago when two species were artificially hybridized, but the original wild plants come from Argentina and Bolivia. The Incans buried peanuts with their dead and fashioned clay pots in the shape of peanuts. They are technically a legume rather than a nut, but as they taste similar to other nuts,the name has stuck. Spanish explorers took them back to Europe in the 1600s and they quickly spread to Asia and Africa. Though the Incas had long been making a paste from peanuts, John Henry Kellogg of the cereal fame, made the first commercial peanut butter in the US in 1895.

One in four people in the world eat chilli peppers daily. They are known as peppers because when Christopher Columbus took them back to Spain the taste was compared with the Eastern spice, pepper. The biological name is capsicum. They have been cultivated across the Americas since at least 5,000 BC and chilli is originally a Nahuati word. Peppers come in a huge range of varieties including bell peppers and smaller, hotter tasting chillies in multiple colourations. Chilli seems to be the singular spice that was actually traded in the opposite direction, from West to East. The Portuguese started trading chilli with India, West Africa and Vietnam from the fifteenth century and it entered the cuisines of many countries in those zones.

The potato had been cultivated in southern Peru and Bolivia for up to 10,000 years but by the time of the arrival of the Spanish it was being eaten all over South and Central America. The word potato is derived from the Taino word batata or 'sweet potato'. By the end of the fifteenth century it was being cultivated in most European countries, though there was great suspicion of a plant whose leaves were poisonous but the tuber could be eaten. It slowly grew in popularity, and due to its high nutritional and calorific values even became the dominant crop in some countries, such as Ireland. Lack of diversity in the European varieties led to the potato being wiped out by disease in 1845

in Ireland, leading to mass starvation and death. The potato is now the fourth largest crop in the world and is a feature of all the world's cuisines. The word tomato originated from Nahuatl as tomatl, and was cultivated in Mexico. 

It is a relative newcomer to South American cultivation, having been first grown by the Aztecs around 700 AD. When the Spanish originally introduced it into Europe it almost immediately became established as a fundamental staple of the cuisines of Spain and Italy, but in northern Europe it was only used as a decorative plant as it was thought to be poisonous, possibly because of its bright red colour or high acidity. Tomatoes came to North America with southern European immigrants in the 1800s, and with the blending of cuisines that occurred in America, tomatoes soon gained a popularity that spread around the worid. Pizza is now one or the word's most popular foods, and the tomato is a necessary ingredient of that. Other foods that originated in South America are pineapples, pumpkins, green beans, zucchinis, sweet potatoes, Brazil nuts, chia seeds, papaya, quinoa, cocoa, squash and many others. Coffee, however, much to the surprise of many, has its origins in Africa.