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In the market: Foods that Go Global
Imagine a world without chocolate! Until roughly 500 years ago, no one outside the Americas had ever seen many of the items for sale in this market, including chocolate, vanilla, maize (corn), tomatoes or chile peppers. What's more, no one in the Americas had ever seen beef, cheese, apples, sugar or coffee. These foods, and many others, belonged to separate worlds, divided by a vast ocean.
Chiles:
People have been enjoying the spicy taste of chile peppers for thousands of years -- but until 500 years ago, only in the Americas. First domesticated in the Americas at least 6,000 years ago, Capsicum peppers were carried far and wide and bred into countless varieties. People in what is now Mexico used chiles in everything from tomales to chocolate drinks to candy for children.
... chiles today
Asian... Or American?
It's hard to even imagine Chinese, Indian, Thai or other Asian foods without spicy hot peppers. But until Capsicum peppers first reached Asia from the Americas about 500 years ago, Asian foods lacked their characteristic heat -- though they had many other spices. |