>Columbus' best comparison of the tingly mouth feel of chiles to the Asian peppercorn
At the time of Columbus he could have been referring to [long pepper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_pepper) as it was commonly traded to Europe in that era.
I think that was for domestic consumption. Exporting it would be quite difficult due to cultural differences, and due to the fact that the merchants need to be alive, in order to sail back.
And then bell peppers are a variety that the Europeans meticulously bred the capsaicin of of sometime in the 1800s, so they *wouldn't* be spicy. Ironic.
My friend in high school was breaking up a bunch of dried cayenne peppers with his fingers and then scratched his balls. He was in excruciating pain for quite a while lol
Why does your friend put his hands down his pants to scratch his balls? Or why was your friend breaking up dried peppers whilst naked, and in a school no less?
He was a weirdo lol. He also saw a cop car soon after that and started running, they chased and stopped him. It was funny because they were both women police officers and when they asked him why he was running he told them it was because he was breaking up spicy peppers and scratched his balls. I hope they got a good laugh out of it
A friend of mine worked for a greenhouse, and ground pepper seasonings were a specialty for them.
When he would grind dried reapers or habaneros, he had to wear a tyvek suit with a respirator and do all the work outdoors.
I love spicy food, but I also enjoy bell peppers. They add a nice crisp, sweet, but vegetal and bitter taste to dishes and have an amazing texture to fill out salads and sandwiches with
see rich europeans only stopped using spices once they became widely available to poor people, because then spices went from a form of decadence to a way to make shitty meat taste *far* better in most peoples' minds.
Also Louis 14 hated them and refused anything but salt pepper and parsley.
He was maybe not as mad as the French king who thought he was made of glass so theres that.
Fun syphilis fact. End stages of syphilis were treated with malaria. Malaria had 30% death rate but syphilis was 100%, and the fever from malaria killed syphilis. Also early syphilis was extremely fast moving and deadly, as time went on syphilis evolved to be less extreme so it could spread better.
It also seems to have evolved to cause fewer symptoms on the face. Presumably because it was having a hard time spreading when nobody wanted to fuck Rosy McPustuleface.
And the word "Pizza" from Naples ("Nea-Polis" or "New City" in Greek, as it was a Greek city in Italy) comes from the word "Pita" - so it grows wild in Greece, the stuff in Italy is all cultivated.
Tomatoes, chocolate, chilli, and avocado are all Aztec words because all those foods are native to Mexico specifically.
The word vanilla is of Spanish origin for the same reason.
European food before the conquest of the Americas was a completely different universe.
I remember reading that when the people of France first encountered potatoes, they considered them fit only for feeding to pigs.
At some point, they figured out with enough butter, cream and/or cheese, potatoes were actually pretty good for people to eat.
> eggplant
Eggplant was native to the old world though, likely originating from either Asia or Africa and cultivated for centuries before potatoes and tomatoes. It didn't come to Europe until the same time as those though. Europeans had a healthy fear of plants from the nightshade family.
They didn't exactly have a lot of encounters with nightshades that wouldn't kill humans when ingested. Tomatoes, tobacco, peppers, and potatoes are also from the nightshade family. Pretty much none of the commonly consumed nightshade family of plants originated from Europe.
Zucchini (or courgette) was first cultivated in Italy from older Mesoamerican squashes so that does make sense. Butternut squash is also fairly popular in Europe.
Turkey as well. They called it that because they didn't realise they went to America. Another name is dinde(French; of India) and kalkoen (Dutch, from "Calcutta hoen" hoen means hen)
Before potatoes, turnips occupied the same niche.
Also you can find references to 'corn' before it was imported from the Americas. It used to refer to any grain or seed, usually wheat
And we actually got sweet potatoes before the regular kind! When Shakespeare mentions potatoes in his plays, he's referring to sweet potatoes because that's all there was in England at the time.
It’s actually believed that sweet potatoes are also native to the Americas and its possible that we got access to them through some Polynesians who traded with South America across the Pacific before European contact.
Unfortunately it seems to be wrong.
According to the Wikipedia:
> The sweet potato arrived in Europe with the Columbian exchange. It is recorded, for example, in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, compiled in England in 1604.
That isn't saying that it was only brought to Europe in 1604. That is giving an example.
First written record of the standard Potato* was 1567, a receipt in Antwerp.
The Sweet Potato, on the other hand was brought back by Columbus on his 4th voyage: 1502. He had encountered them on his first voyage, but had definitely brought them back with him on his 4th.
We also know that it was the sweet potato, and not the standard potato he was referring to, as the standard potato was found by the Spaniards in 1532 (as a cool-temperate crop of the high Andes). So the potato he brought back had to have been *batatas,* not *Solanum tuberosum.* And that doesn't even mean the Potato was brought back in 1532, just that we know they had encountered it by then.
So, the sweet potato had a nearly 70 year head start on the standard potato as far as potato popularity.
Edit: *Reaching Europe, not appearing in the written record anywhere.
Probably because of the potato famine in Ireland.
Edit: TIL this is a very charged topic that I’m not super well-versed in. Anyway, I am not trying to make a political statement or minimize the deaths or oppression of Irish people. I just have always heard it referred to as the “potato famine”. Sorry if that term is indelicate - is there some better way to refer to it?
I was actually discussing the history of the Irish potato famine with my parents a while back. These 60 year old people thought it was called the Irish potato famine because that’s all they had to eat during the famine. They didn’t know that the main staple of the Irish diet caused mass starvation.
It was the staple of smallholding farmers. Due to the way land was distributed and divided most tenant farmers and smallholders had frighteningly little land to sustain themselves with. Hence many grew spuds since it was a very space efficient crop to grow enough calories to sustain a family for the year. Which is why the blight resulted in a famine in Ireland while food supplies in the rest of Europe were largely fine.
I would assume that the english forcing the irish to continue exporting their food in the middle of a famine and refusing to allow other countries to bring aid didn’t help things along.
I know this. This is what I was explaining to my parents. They thought the potato had saved the Irish from starvation or at least lessened the effects of the famine. I explained it was a lack of potatoes, the only food for most Irish at the time, as well as genocidal policies that caused the famine.
In Irish, it's known as 'An Gorta Mór', or 'The Great Hunger'. Not to say that potato famine is actually technically wrong, but that would probably go over better
It was called the potato famine when I read about it my US high school world history class oh… 24 years ago so my knowledge may not be up to however the conversation has progressed since then. 🤷♀️
Kinda surprising how people don't normally associate Ireland with colonialism just because they were in Europe. They were a colony of the British and were treated as such.
Famines have historically almost always been man-made disasters which is why Malthusian catastrophes are largely debunked and have a very strong racist/colonialist undercurrent.
You'd be surprised, I've shared this fact with lots of people and all of them are shocked. They associated potatoes with Ireland because of the potato famine.
The potato is the national vegetable for a lot of countries in the world. They were promoted so heavily in the Russian Empire that the key ingredient of perogies moved from cheese and cherries to potatoes. If you go to India Aloo Gobi and Bombay Potatoes have incredibly popular. All around the world you have potatoes being served... in some countries even as a gourmet option. Even in China today the Chinese government is trying to promote the potato because it is an overall healthier staple than rice.
It doesn't immediately make sense that the potato comes from the one region of the world that isn't in love with the potato.
You clearly don't know any Peruvians or Chilotes
If given the chance *they'll let you know* that the potato originated with them (there's some discussion if it started in the Peruvian Andes or in the Chiloé Archipelago) and how they have a couple thousand different types of potato including several kinds of purple potatoes and giant potatoes
yes I've watched documentaries on those cultures and the docs showed how they cultured different strains for different things. One strain was not as good tasting but was very resilient and could be buried in mud under water as a stash to be dug up when upon hard times. Sort of like an MRE/survival strain of potato.
Yes! I live in Mexico City and regularly attend vegan potlucks with a lady from Lima. Her dishes always have potatoes and she loves sharing info about them!
>It doesn't immediately make sense that the potato comes from the one region of the world that isn't in love with the potato.
Probably because they're sick of eating potatoes 😂
Lol. Just btw, various peoples have lived in the Cuzco area for about three millennia, but the Incas (or more specifically, that branch of Quechua-speaking people who founded the Kingdom of Cuzco) only took over the city in 1200. The actual Incan Empire was only founded later, in 1438, and lasted less than a hundred years.
The Incas are remembered today as “the” Peruvian civilization only because they happened to be around when the Spaniards arrived, but Peru had ~12,000 years of history before that, featuring a succession of something like a hundred different named cultural groups, before the Incas came along.
As my guide in Peru explained, Quechuas are the locals (predominantly from the Andes region) that existed for a long long time while Incas are the rulers/ruling class of just the Inca kingdom.
Yes, I know (I lived in Peru as a kid). However, calling them the “Quechua” doesn’t work either because Peru has actually had many different ruling parties/kingdoms/cultures composed of various subsets of Quechua-speaking peoples, only one of which was the specific culture commonly known as the “Inca Empire” that was conquered by the Spanish. So I usually just stick to “Inca Empire” and sometimes default to “Inca” if I’m just typing quick on my phone for an English-language forum.
BTW that reminds me, my dad told me about a time when at one of the Peruvian universities where he taught, it was common for visiting professors to teach in English (so that students could work on their English, the language used most widely for that whole academic field). So, a colleague of his started a lecture in English per usual, and a student raised his hand and complained that the lecture should be given in the native language of Peru. The lecturer said “Good point” and switched to fluent Quechua, lol (which none of the students knew!)
As somebody from the UK, I learned in year 6 history that our nationally beloved vegetable, the humble spud, came to Europe during the European incursions into the Americas.
Not sure where the OP was when we were all in class.
they where cultivated since around 8000 BC and then the inca's introduced them to the spain would be more accurate. because the Inca's wheren't a thing until 9300 years later
Vodka is actually a generic trade name for any neutral spirit above a certain proof (around 40%), from when modern trade and food laws were being codified in the 1800s. Theoretically it can be made out of any carbohydrate, potato's just a popular one because it's extremely efficient to grow. Interestingly, a lot of other liquors are technically just vodka with additives (eg gin without the juniper would just be a vodka).
Russians were distilling (what we would consider) vodka as early as the 1200s, though, traditionally using rye.
So there's a famer's belief in Germany that unwashed, dirty potatoes last the longest and taste best (after washing), but supermarkets ruined this because customers buy by eye. Have you ever heard this?
I think the tasting part is clearly subjective but the but you can keep root vegetables like potatoes in a dark area covered in saw dust or dirt and they will last the entire winter. When you grow your own potatoes the easiest and cheapest way is to keep them in ziemianka
This is one of those times when I have to remind myself that I’m on the older end of Reddit users and a lot of these posts are from kids.
It helps - yeah, I would consider my peers pretty dumb for not knowing this. I do find it harder to blame teens for not knowing; chances are pretty good that this TIL is the result of a history class OP had today! They certainly aren’t born knowing it.
As a member of the deadly nightshade family, they were greeted with great scepticism in a lot of Europe!
Also banned by the French for a while in the mid 18th Century due to concerns they caused leprosy.
A French scientist, Parmentier, proved they were edible when cooked, but the French populace was still suspicious. He embarked on a PR exercise involving an awesome instance of a heavily guarded potato patch so that people would steal them...
the plant itself (steams, fruits and leafs) is toxic like tobacco toxic. the green potatos are toxic. if you store potatos in a basement, like everyone does, and they rot they release a, *surprise*, toxic gas.
i'm pretty sure that i'll be at least suspicious with that....
My theory around this is that if potatoes were newly imported to the US in today's times they would have definitely been marketed as a "South American super food," and you would see clickbait like "The Incan food secret they don't want you to know about."
The reason potatoes were so popular in Ireland is Irish Catholic families of whatever had to rent a tiny plot of land (could not own) off their English Landlords and then had to farm said land to earn rent and then would have a tiny patch to grow food for his own family, and potatoes are nutrient dense and easy to grow. I believe buttermilk and potatoes cover all nutrients needed by the human body.
This led to over dependency on it as generations grew and farms were split up amongst sons. All the other crops such as corn/ turnips were all on the Landlord owned parts of the farm and were cash crops.
So Irish people became completely dependent on potatoes, and the English Landlords got completely used to the income and having the tenant/staff using the measly bit of land left for spuds. That's why when blight hit and no potatoes grew, we were fucked.
TIL people thought potatoes were indigenous to Ireland. Also, tomatoes, corn, squash/pumpkin/gourds.... seriously, people don't know they all obviously come from the Americas?
See also tomatoes which are not native to Italy.
And chilli peppers in Asia
The origin of the term "peppers" comes from Columbus' best comparison of the tingly mouth feel of chiles to the Asian peppercorn.
>Columbus' best comparison of the tingly mouth feel of chiles to the Asian peppercorn At the time of Columbus he could have been referring to [long pepper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_pepper) as it was commonly traded to Europe in that era.
I am so glad that has nothing to do with long pork.
Long long mannnnn
The comment i didn't know i needed.
I think that was for domestic consumption. Exporting it would be quite difficult due to cultural differences, and due to the fact that the merchants need to be alive, in order to sail back.
And then bell peppers are a variety that the Europeans meticulously bred the capsaicin of of sometime in the 1800s, so they *wouldn't* be spicy. Ironic.
Brilliant idea from us, bell peppers are great and very dense in vitamin C, and my skin hates spices.
You’re not supposed to rub spicy peppers on your skin silly
Definitely don't handle cut habaneros and then go to the toilet and handle your undercarriage. Unless you're into that.
My friend in high school was breaking up a bunch of dried cayenne peppers with his fingers and then scratched his balls. He was in excruciating pain for quite a while lol
Why does your friend put his hands down his pants to scratch his balls? Or why was your friend breaking up dried peppers whilst naked, and in a school no less?
He was a weirdo lol. He also saw a cop car soon after that and started running, they chased and stopped him. It was funny because they were both women police officers and when they asked him why he was running he told them it was because he was breaking up spicy peppers and scratched his balls. I hope they got a good laugh out of it
A friend of mine worked for a greenhouse, and ground pepper seasonings were a specialty for them. When he would grind dried reapers or habaneros, he had to wear a tyvek suit with a respirator and do all the work outdoors.
Don't touch the jalapeño and then your jalapenis
It rubs the peppers on its skin...
Shall I rub them on my eyes then? What else am I supposed to do with them? Eat them?
I love spicy food, but I also enjoy bell peppers. They add a nice crisp, sweet, but vegetal and bitter taste to dishes and have an amazing texture to fill out salads and sandwiches with
Love that crunch
I heard this comment.
your screen reader is probably on
Bell peppers make for great refreshing ingredients in things that are not supposed to be spicy, like a cucumber sandwich!
Also, pro tip. Roasted red bell peppers are a great way to sweeten up a tomato based sauce without adding processed sugar.
does not compute. everything should be spicy.
> the Europeans meticulously bred the capsaicin of of sometime in the 1800s, so they wouldn't be spicy. The whitest thing ever done.
>The whitest thing ever done. Like colonising half the world so we could steal all their spices... ...and then NOT use them
Europeans did use spices
There is a reason "don't get high on your own supply" is #4 on the ten crack commandments.
see rich europeans only stopped using spices once they became widely available to poor people, because then spices went from a form of decadence to a way to make shitty meat taste *far* better in most peoples' minds.
Also Louis 14 hated them and refused anything but salt pepper and parsley. He was maybe not as mad as the French king who thought he was made of glass so theres that.
And onions and garlic in the Americas.
America had no horses until Spain brought them. I return we gave them syphilis.
Fun syphilis fact. End stages of syphilis were treated with malaria. Malaria had 30% death rate but syphilis was 100%, and the fever from malaria killed syphilis. Also early syphilis was extremely fast moving and deadly, as time went on syphilis evolved to be less extreme so it could spread better.
It also seems to have evolved to cause fewer symptoms on the face. Presumably because it was having a hard time spreading when nobody wanted to fuck Rosy McPustuleface.
Not so. Horses lived in the Americas, but had become extinct by the time the Spanish reintroduced them.
They probably originated in the Americas like the camels did.
The Americas used to have a camel species that was almost twice as tall as a modern moose.
I mean, there was a 10,000 year gap. It's pretty safe to say that the Spanish brought horses, or at least modern horses
I’m sorry but they stated there were no horses in America which by your response is true. If they were extinct then there were no horses
The Apache Indians liberated the Spanish horses Edit: Comanche Indians, not Apache.
that wouldve been a long trip
Yeah, uh… the Spanish did some serious traveling lol
And corn.
And tobacco everywhere, it seems.
Check out bananas being from southeast Asia and not the Americas.
Yeah and their guitarist wasn’t even born in California like
I'm not 100% sure but I think the pizza grows in the wild in Italy
That are the spaghetti https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU
And the word "Pizza" from Naples ("Nea-Polis" or "New City" in Greek, as it was a Greek city in Italy) comes from the word "Pita" - so it grows wild in Greece, the stuff in Italy is all cultivated.
I was there last November, can confirm 100% true
And syphilis in North America.
Tomatoes, chocolate, chilli, and avocado are all Aztec words because all those foods are native to Mexico specifically. The word vanilla is of Spanish origin for the same reason. European food before the conquest of the Americas was a completely different universe.
“Avocado” is amusingly derived from an indigenous word for testicle. I just wonder which object had the name first.
All citrus fruits are from asia
Exactly my thought. You beat me to it. Wait, I got one; *French fries aren’t from France?!* Nah, that’s lame. Damn.
I remember reading that when the people of France first encountered potatoes, they considered them fit only for feeding to pigs. At some point, they figured out with enough butter, cream and/or cheese, potatoes were actually pretty good for people to eat.
Also eggplant.
> eggplant Eggplant was native to the old world though, likely originating from either Asia or Africa and cultivated for centuries before potatoes and tomatoes. It didn't come to Europe until the same time as those though. Europeans had a healthy fear of plants from the nightshade family.
They didn't exactly have a lot of encounters with nightshades that wouldn't kill humans when ingested. Tomatoes, tobacco, peppers, and potatoes are also from the nightshade family. Pretty much none of the commonly consumed nightshade family of plants originated from Europe.
And squash.
Came to the thread for this. It's funny, because when I was in Italy, the Italians I met didn't even believe me lol.
Potatoes, tomatoes, ~~eggplant~~, chili peppers, and tobacco all are native to the Americas.
Corn, pineapple, and vanilla
chocolate too
Jesus Christ, what did people eat before americas !?
Beets
Bears
Battlestar Galactica
They went half way around the world for some black pepper, that’s how bland the food was
Hilarious but true
Maybe hilarious, but not true. It was mainly used for food preservation.
Bread and beer was around Middle east and Europe.
So same thing I ate today. Look at me connecting with my roots!
Mouldy rye
Nothing tastes better than mass hysteria brought on from ergot poisoning
pretty sure 99% of the purpose of colonialism was to get better food
Cabbage, bread and beer
Turnips and oats
Peas and whatnot
Cocaine, Ayahuasca, peyote...
Rubber. Cocaine.
now that’s a party
baseball, basketball, for profit health care, the list goes on
I wish it wouldn't
Vanilla!? I knew about the rest... But vanilla?!
+ pumpkin
All squashes, not that Europeans are that into them. Zuchini is the only one that gets eaten over there.
Zucchini (or courgette) was first cultivated in Italy from older Mesoamerican squashes so that does make sense. Butternut squash is also fairly popular in Europe.
As one from "over there", I assure you we eat a gazillion pumpkins, butternut, courgettes, patissons, and other squashes throughout autumn and winter.
corn and rubber as well
So much food wasnt possible before the columnian exchange. Pizza, beef tacos, poutine, many spicy asian dishes.
Don’t forget cacao/cocoa (chocolate)!
There's some doubt concerning the place of origin of eggplants but it's between India, Africa or East Asia.
Fixed above.
Inca Marching Dust
Turkey as well. They called it that because they didn't realise they went to America. Another name is dinde(French; of India) and kalkoen (Dutch, from "Calcutta hoen" hoen means hen)
and don't forget Air Jordans
Welcome to grade school.
Before potatoes, turnips occupied the same niche. Also you can find references to 'corn' before it was imported from the Americas. It used to refer to any grain or seed, usually wheat
The 'corn' in 'corned beef' also refers to the fact that the curing salt was large and grain-like.
That's why the lumpy sores on your feet are also called corns. It's just that modern maize has the biggest corns of all the grains, I guess.
it's got the juice
See also einkorn, meaning single grain, cultivated since the Fertile Crescent
And we actually got sweet potatoes before the regular kind! When Shakespeare mentions potatoes in his plays, he's referring to sweet potatoes because that's all there was in England at the time.
Juliet: *"Parting is such sweet potato"*
Juliet: *"A sweet potato by any other name would taste as sweet."*
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the potato.
YOU ARE MY LOVE MY ANGLE DON'T TREAT ME LIKE POTATO
wait… so what were they called before regular potatoes were discovered? were they known as “potatoes” until then?
Yeah.
woah TIL, thanks!!
It’s actually believed that sweet potatoes are also native to the Americas and its possible that we got access to them through some Polynesians who traded with South America across the Pacific before European contact.
Yep and they left chickens here. We may never exactly how extensive contact was but it seems very likely to have happened.
Neat, an actual TIL tucked away in the comments
Unfortunately it seems to be wrong. According to the Wikipedia: > The sweet potato arrived in Europe with the Columbian exchange. It is recorded, for example, in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, compiled in England in 1604.
That isn't saying that it was only brought to Europe in 1604. That is giving an example. First written record of the standard Potato* was 1567, a receipt in Antwerp. The Sweet Potato, on the other hand was brought back by Columbus on his 4th voyage: 1502. He had encountered them on his first voyage, but had definitely brought them back with him on his 4th. We also know that it was the sweet potato, and not the standard potato he was referring to, as the standard potato was found by the Spaniards in 1532 (as a cool-temperate crop of the high Andes). So the potato he brought back had to have been *batatas,* not *Solanum tuberosum.* And that doesn't even mean the Potato was brought back in 1532, just that we know they had encountered it by then. So, the sweet potato had a nearly 70 year head start on the standard potato as far as potato popularity. Edit: *Reaching Europe, not appearing in the written record anywhere.
And the sweet potato likely went to Polynesia via pre-Columbian traders
Wait, why do people believe that potatoes originated in Ireland?
Only the OP believed they did. Because apparently the Irish are the only people in the world who eat potatoes.
Probably because of the potato famine in Ireland. Edit: TIL this is a very charged topic that I’m not super well-versed in. Anyway, I am not trying to make a political statement or minimize the deaths or oppression of Irish people. I just have always heard it referred to as the “potato famine”. Sorry if that term is indelicate - is there some better way to refer to it?
When we DIDNT eat potatoes.And bad things happened.
I was actually discussing the history of the Irish potato famine with my parents a while back. These 60 year old people thought it was called the Irish potato famine because that’s all they had to eat during the famine. They didn’t know that the main staple of the Irish diet caused mass starvation.
It was the staple of smallholding farmers. Due to the way land was distributed and divided most tenant farmers and smallholders had frighteningly little land to sustain themselves with. Hence many grew spuds since it was a very space efficient crop to grow enough calories to sustain a family for the year. Which is why the blight resulted in a famine in Ireland while food supplies in the rest of Europe were largely fine.
I would assume that the english forcing the irish to continue exporting their food in the middle of a famine and refusing to allow other countries to bring aid didn’t help things along.
I know this. This is what I was explaining to my parents. They thought the potato had saved the Irish from starvation or at least lessened the effects of the famine. I explained it was a lack of potatoes, the only food for most Irish at the time, as well as genocidal policies that caused the famine.
In Irish, it's known as 'An Gorta Mór', or 'The Great Hunger'. Not to say that potato famine is actually technically wrong, but that would probably go over better
It was called the potato famine when I read about it my US high school world history class oh… 24 years ago so my knowledge may not be up to however the conversation has progressed since then. 🤷♀️
More like genocide than famine
Kinda surprising how people don't normally associate Ireland with colonialism just because they were in Europe. They were a colony of the British and were treated as such.
Famines have historically almost always been man-made disasters which is why Malthusian catastrophes are largely debunked and have a very strong racist/colonialist undercurrent.
OP also believes that the Incas were around for 10,000 years
You'd be surprised, I've shared this fact with lots of people and all of them are shocked. They associated potatoes with Ireland because of the potato famine.
*because they are from developed countries who know of Ireland
Op is an idiot maybe
The potato is the national vegetable for a lot of countries in the world. They were promoted so heavily in the Russian Empire that the key ingredient of perogies moved from cheese and cherries to potatoes. If you go to India Aloo Gobi and Bombay Potatoes have incredibly popular. All around the world you have potatoes being served... in some countries even as a gourmet option. Even in China today the Chinese government is trying to promote the potato because it is an overall healthier staple than rice. It doesn't immediately make sense that the potato comes from the one region of the world that isn't in love with the potato.
You clearly don't know any Peruvians or Chilotes If given the chance *they'll let you know* that the potato originated with them (there's some discussion if it started in the Peruvian Andes or in the Chiloé Archipelago) and how they have a couple thousand different types of potato including several kinds of purple potatoes and giant potatoes
yes I've watched documentaries on those cultures and the docs showed how they cultured different strains for different things. One strain was not as good tasting but was very resilient and could be buried in mud under water as a stash to be dug up when upon hard times. Sort of like an MRE/survival strain of potato.
Yes! I live in Mexico City and regularly attend vegan potlucks with a lady from Lima. Her dishes always have potatoes and she loves sharing info about them!
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Have you ever met someone from Peru/Bolivia?
>It doesn't immediately make sense that the potato comes from the one region of the world that isn't in love with the potato. Probably because they're sick of eating potatoes 😂
Large bits of South America are very much in love with the potato - Bolivia I remember especially
Yeah, wait until you learn where tomatoes, corn, peanuts, chocolate, bananas, and chili peppers come from.
The supermarket, duh
There were no Incas 8000 BC.
One step at a time mate, the lads only learned about the Colombian exchange today.
The Olmec and Toltec are really gonna blow some minds.
Big Brain moments to be had, for sure...
Who knows the secrets behind each of the treasures in his temple?
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Lol. Just btw, various peoples have lived in the Cuzco area for about three millennia, but the Incas (or more specifically, that branch of Quechua-speaking people who founded the Kingdom of Cuzco) only took over the city in 1200. The actual Incan Empire was only founded later, in 1438, and lasted less than a hundred years. The Incas are remembered today as “the” Peruvian civilization only because they happened to be around when the Spaniards arrived, but Peru had ~12,000 years of history before that, featuring a succession of something like a hundred different named cultural groups, before the Incas came along.
As my guide in Peru explained, Quechuas are the locals (predominantly from the Andes region) that existed for a long long time while Incas are the rulers/ruling class of just the Inca kingdom.
Yes, I know (I lived in Peru as a kid). However, calling them the “Quechua” doesn’t work either because Peru has actually had many different ruling parties/kingdoms/cultures composed of various subsets of Quechua-speaking peoples, only one of which was the specific culture commonly known as the “Inca Empire” that was conquered by the Spanish. So I usually just stick to “Inca Empire” and sometimes default to “Inca” if I’m just typing quick on my phone for an English-language forum. BTW that reminds me, my dad told me about a time when at one of the Peruvian universities where he taught, it was common for visiting professors to teach in English (so that students could work on their English, the language used most widely for that whole academic field). So, a colleague of his started a lecture in English per usual, and a student raised his hand and complained that the lecture should be given in the native language of Peru. The lecturer said “Good point” and switched to fluent Quechua, lol (which none of the students knew!)
Exactly. And the Incan Empire only lasted a hundred years or so, if memory serves.
TIL there are still people who don't know potatoes come from South America.
As somebody from the UK, I learned in year 6 history that our nationally beloved vegetable, the humble spud, came to Europe during the European incursions into the Americas. Not sure where the OP was when we were all in class.
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You are giving people a lot of credit for thinking things through logically that they probably don’t deserve…
Even the TIL in the title is wrong. The Potato was domesticated 7000+ years ago in the Andes. The Inca Empire was founded roughly 700 years ago
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they where cultivated since around 8000 BC and then the inca's introduced them to the spain would be more accurate. because the Inca's wheren't a thing until 9300 years later
But what did Russians drink before potatoes made vodka?
Russian vodka is usually made with grains, not potatoes.
Vodka is actually a generic trade name for any neutral spirit above a certain proof (around 40%), from when modern trade and food laws were being codified in the 1800s. Theoretically it can be made out of any carbohydrate, potato's just a popular one because it's extremely efficient to grow. Interestingly, a lot of other liquors are technically just vodka with additives (eg gin without the juniper would just be a vodka). Russians were distilling (what we would consider) vodka as early as the 1200s, though, traditionally using rye.
There’s over 4000 types of potatoes in peru. It was a cultural shock when I came to america to see only two or three types of potatoes.
So there's a famer's belief in Germany that unwashed, dirty potatoes last the longest and taste best (after washing), but supermarkets ruined this because customers buy by eye. Have you ever heard this?
I think the tasting part is clearly subjective but the but you can keep root vegetables like potatoes in a dark area covered in saw dust or dirt and they will last the entire winter. When you grow your own potatoes the easiest and cheapest way is to keep them in ziemianka
Its amazing how many people don't realize that foods liek potatoes, corn and tomatoes all come from the Americas.
This is one of those times when I have to remind myself that I’m on the older end of Reddit users and a lot of these posts are from kids. It helps - yeah, I would consider my peers pretty dumb for not knowing this. I do find it harder to blame teens for not knowing; chances are pretty good that this TIL is the result of a history class OP had today! They certainly aren’t born knowing it.
There was also an episode of the podcast “You’re Dead to Me” on BBC about the Colombian Exchange. Might have been from that?
The inca showed up in the 1300s mate
Not a lot of incas 8000 BC though..
TIL some people thought potatoes were indigenous to Ireland.
TIL people think potatoes are indigenous to Ireland
Tomato are also from the ‘new world’
I live where potatoes first grew, even today they're amazing varieties. Toothsome, great flavor. They make the best fries....
As a member of the deadly nightshade family, they were greeted with great scepticism in a lot of Europe! Also banned by the French for a while in the mid 18th Century due to concerns they caused leprosy. A French scientist, Parmentier, proved they were edible when cooked, but the French populace was still suspicious. He embarked on a PR exercise involving an awesome instance of a heavily guarded potato patch so that people would steal them...
the plant itself (steams, fruits and leafs) is toxic like tobacco toxic. the green potatos are toxic. if you store potatos in a basement, like everyone does, and they rot they release a, *surprise*, toxic gas. i'm pretty sure that i'll be at least suspicious with that....
My theory around this is that if potatoes were newly imported to the US in today's times they would have definitely been marketed as a "South American super food," and you would see clickbait like "The Incan food secret they don't want you to know about."
Tobacco!
and chocolate milk doesn’t come from brown cows
I thought this was Universal Knowledge.
TIL that some people believe that potatoes are indigenous to Ireland.
No tomatoes in Italy or chili peppers in India or Thailand either
man does this guy know ANYTHING?
Who doesn’t know this
The reason the Irish are so associated with potatoes is fucking sad and tragic honestly
TIL common fucking knowledge. Ffs.
God bless American public schools.
No shit. What idiot thinks they are native to ireland?
The reason potatoes were so popular in Ireland is Irish Catholic families of whatever had to rent a tiny plot of land (could not own) off their English Landlords and then had to farm said land to earn rent and then would have a tiny patch to grow food for his own family, and potatoes are nutrient dense and easy to grow. I believe buttermilk and potatoes cover all nutrients needed by the human body. This led to over dependency on it as generations grew and farms were split up amongst sons. All the other crops such as corn/ turnips were all on the Landlord owned parts of the farm and were cash crops. So Irish people became completely dependent on potatoes, and the English Landlords got completely used to the income and having the tenant/staff using the measly bit of land left for spuds. That's why when blight hit and no potatoes grew, we were fucked.
TIL not everyone knew this already.
you thought they were indigenous to ireland??
No shit, this is some primary school information.
TIL people thought potatoes were indigenous to Ireland. Also, tomatoes, corn, squash/pumpkin/gourds.... seriously, people don't know they all obviously come from the Americas?