영어1 YBM 박준언 2과 본문 Chilies, Potatoes, and Tomatoes 읽기 연습

Lesson 2 Origins of Everyday Things

Chilies, Potatoes, and Tomatoes: The Globalization of Food

Look at your evening meal. 

 

You might find rice, a bean paste stew with potatoes, a few dishes of vegetables, and of course Gimchi, which contains a lot of spicy chili. 

 

Since chilies, in particular, are an essential ingredient for many spicy Korean dishes, you would hardly suspect that they originated in another country. 

 

You would not be the first person to make that mistake.

 

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Ask a Chinese or an Indian or a Mexican, and most will argue that chilies are native to their homeland. 

 

Sorry for them, but they are all wrong. 

 

Chili peppers originated in South America. 

 

Not just chili peppers, but many of the foods we consume today, including potatoes and tomatoes, originated in the same region and spread to the rest of the world because of the work of a single person. 

 

This story is an interesting part in the history of the globalization of food. 

 

In 1492, when Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer, set sail from Spain to find a new route to India, the purpose of his journey was to find a way to safely bring black pepper from Asia and secure the kitchens of Europe. 

 

Europeans had used black pepper as a medicine and a spice since ancient times. 

 

Imported from South India and nearby islands, black pepper was an expensive spice. 

 

When the Ottoman Empire took over Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, it effectively blocked routes to India, and the price of black pepper shot up. 

 

As a result, European traders had to look for new ways to trade with India for pepper and other spices.

 

Columbus headed west and, upon reaching the islands of the Caribbean, believed he had found the route to India that he was seeking. 

 

He was mistaken, of course. 

 

 

 

Instead of black pepper, he found other plants that he believed to be another type of pepper. 

 

Those plants were later called chilies or chili peppers. 

 

Europeans at first hesitated to try chilies, just the way many people today do not like to try new foods. 

 

When Portuguese traders carried chilies to other parts of the world, however, including Africa and Southeast Asia, it revolutionized local kitchens. People loved chilies so much that they put them into every dish possible. 

 

The speed of the chili pepper's spread was exceptional. 

 

Within a half century after arriving in Spain, it was being used across much of Asia, along the coast of Africa, in the Middle East, and in Eastern Europe. 

 

Chilies spread quickly, in part because they were easy to grow in a wide range of climates and conditions, which made them an abundant crop. 

 

From a nutritional point of view, chilies are much less valuable than rice, corn, or potatoes. 

 

By making even plain food rich in flavor, however, chilies were the one luxury item the poor could afford to eat every day. 

 

Many local dishes, popular among common people, were transformed into hot, spicy, and unique foods, thanks to chilies. 

 

Curry in India, hot pot in South China, tom yum in Thailand, and goulash in Hungary are just a few of the foods that were reborn with chilies.

 

 

 

Upon returning to Spain, Columbus took other new crops that he expected would capture the attention of Europeans. 

 

They included potatoes and tomatoes. 

 

While chilies improved ordinary food by adding spice to them, potatoes greatly improved the nutrition of the populations of Europe, Africa, and Asia. 

 

Potatoes were at first less favored than sweet potatoes by Europeans. 

 

After it was revealed that potatoes were not only nutritious but also grew well on poor soils and in hostile climates, their cultivation quickly spread to Northern and Eastern Europe. 

 

In Ireland, for example, the potato became the staple food, with adults consuming an average of ten potatoes a day. 

 

According to one estimate, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the population growth in Europe, Africa, and Asia between 1700 and 1900. 

 

Among the crops that Columbus introduced to Europe, tomatoes had to wait longer than the others, nearly two hundred years, before becoming part of everyday meals. 

 

 

 

There were two reasons for this. 

 

The first was that the tomato looked a lot like the fruit of certain poisonous plants that were well known to Europeans. 

 

Because of this, they were at first grown only as a decorative plant rather than as a food. 

 

Several decades passed before they began to be consumed as a food, and then, during the 1500s, they spread slowly to Spain, Italy, and France.

 

Up until the late 1700s, however, a large percentage of Europeans still feared the tomato. 

 

Another name for the fruit was "poison apple" because it was thought that the nobles got sick and sometimes died after eating them. 

 

That was the second reason that tomatoes were slow to spread as a food. 

 

The truth was that wealthy Europeans at that time ate off plates made of heavy metals including considerable amounts of lead. 

 

Because tomatoes are high in acidity, when placed on such plates, the fruit would release the lead, resulting in the poisoning of the diner. 

 

No one at the time made the connection between the plate and the poison, so the tomato was blamed. 

 

The tomato was later cleared of its false charge, and the invention of pizza in Naples in the 1880s kicked off the tomato's popularity in Europe. 

 

For thousands of years chilies, potatoes, and tomatoes had been consumed only in certain regions in South America before they crossed the Atlantic Ocean five hundred years ago. 

 

They spread to other continents and, when blended with local foods, created unique dishes. 

 

The globalization of chili peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes completely changed the kitchens of the world.

 

 

 

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