SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Many "American" foods we love come from parts of world Trump has vilified

[highplainsdem]

Yes, Scientific American, in a Thanksgiving commentary:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-foreigners-at-your-thanksgiving-table/

The Foreigners at Your Thanksgiving Table

Many of the "American" foods we love came from parts of the world President Trump has vilified


The foreigners are here. They’re in our supermarkets. They’re in our schools. They may even be in the room with you right now (cue dramatic music). I’m not talking about the hardworking migrant workers who toil long hours to collect the food we eat (and who deserve our support, kindness and respect). The foreigners in this case are the food we eat.

More wheat, corn (also known as maize), rice and soybeans are grown in the fields of the United States than any other crop. These plants are not just on our tables; they’re everywhere, from the starch in our clothing to the fuel that we use to the medicine we take (corn steep liquor is used in making penicillin) to the most intimate aspects of our lives (because cornstarch is used in condoms and other family planning and personal hygiene products).

But most of these foods were first developed in what President Trump once referred to as “shithole countries.” Wheat was originally domesticated by the inhabitants of Syria, Turkey and Iraq roughly 11,000 years ago. Around the same time in China, early farmers developed rice and, later, soybeans. Corn was bred in central Mexico approximately 9,000 years ago and was so important to the Olmec, Maya and other Mesoamerican civilizations that they even had maize gods. All of these foreigners are around us in some capacity, and they form the backbone of our great economy.

Foreigners aren’t just found in fields, they are also found in our gardens and in our houses. The people of Peru domesticated the potato and the peoples of Central America gave us chili peppers. Native Americans, whom the GOP routinely tries to prevent from voting, domesticated the turkey we consume this Thanksgiving and the pumpkins we carved for Halloween. Even our most socially acceptable vices such as tobacco (South America), coffee (Ethiopia) and tea (China) have dubious foreign origins. If there was a way to ferment sugars, people found a way to turn it into booze, with some of the earliest evidence of alcohol production found in the first civilizations in the world in the Middle East.

The very food that tempts me at the checkout line, chocolate, can be traced back to a plant that was originally domesticated in South America and refined by the Olmec and Maya of Central America. The candy bars that we give out at Halloween are an un-American combination of chocolate, sugar (sugarcane originally from Southeast Asia) and milk (originally developed in the Middle East). You can thank the Aztecs for our tomatoes and people of New Guinea for our bananas. The Native Americans of eastern North America domesticated the beautiful sunflower, and then the Russians made them even better by developing the varieties with the giant dinner-plate–sized flower heads.

-snip-

[fierywoman]

1. Or, as my Italian friend Lorenzo asked when he returned to Italy from his US visit: "What is

"American" cooking? And what is that brown stuff that comes with everything?"

[Shrike47]

3. What IS that brown stuff that comes with everything?

Puzzled.

[volstork]

4. Gravy?

I'm puzzled as well...

[fierywoman]

5. Yeah. He ordered something like beef, "... and they put this brown stuff on it, che schiffo

(=disgusting) and I ordered some chicken and they put the same brown stuff on it. Terrible!"

[pangaia]

2. And then there is the "American' language.

[TlalocW]

6. Yeah, all that is great but

You dump some ranch dressing on any of it, and you've got 'MURICA!!!

TlalocW