Your Favorite Foods are Probably American in Origin

Modern cuisine benefits greatly from food crops originating in the Americas

Do you enjoy German chocolate? What about going out for Italian, there's nothing like pasta with tomato sauce? Enjoy bangers and mash? And of course Thai food often leverages peanuts? And in November, we sit down to a large meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberries, pumpkin pie, and corn.

The majority of the foods listed above have in part their origins in Native American agriculture. Here's a short list for you to take in (warning you might become hungry as you review): Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes, Squash, Pumpkin, Corn, Avocado, Green Beans, Cacao, Peanuts, Peppers, and Cranberries.

Corn was arguably the most important crop of the Americas, it was grown and eaten not only by city-dwelling Native Americans like the Cahokians, but corn or maize was a staple crop across the Americas from Mexico to the American Southwest to the Midwest. It was domesticated from a wild grain around 9,000 years ago. Corn is still a major crop in the United States today, from popcorn, to high fructose corn syrup, to animal feed; the United States exports over a billion bushels of corn.

Many of these food crops in the Americas became incredibly valuable when grown in Europe. The potato supported the Incan Empire and later became the staple crop of Ireland. Tomatoes got their wild start in or near Peru as well, but appears to have been cultivated further north near the Yucatan. The tomato like the potato made its way to Europe, and oddly enough made it's way back across the ocean such that most of our garden varieties are ancestors of European breeds of tomato.

Today it's hard to imagine Italian cuisine without the tomato or Irish or German cuisine without the potato. In the Americas a wide variety of produce was being grown without the benefit of horses or oxen to pull plows.  Native peoples innovated new ways to grow crops to minimize depleting the soil; Three Sisters Planting combines growing corn, with beans, and pumpkin or squash together. Legumes like beans or peanuts put nitrogen back into the soil; it's the same reason farms in the Midwest rotate corn and soy today. The Three Sisters method provides other benefits, the corn acts as a pole or terrace for the beans to climb, and the leaves of the pumpkin or squash plants help keep the soil cool to retain water.

I've saved dessert for last. Cacao is a seed or nut which can be made into chocolate or cocoa. In the ancient Americas, it was turned into a drink. While the plant grew in South America, as it does today,  like today it was enjoyed elsewhere. In my last post, I touched on trade between ancient American cities, and cacao was no exception. Artifacts from Cahokia indicate that Cahokians were enjoying the same Cacao beverage enjoyed by their South American neighbors.

In short, the food crops of the Americas are not only delicious but they continue to impact our daily lives and economies around the world. Food is certainly a part of culture, and while we don't often reflect on the origins of our food, maybe the next time you sit down for a meal, you'll think about how America's first peoples cultivated it thousands of years before your meal.