The End of Food History
Since the origins of agriculture about 11,000 years ago, the story of food has also been one of globalisation.
The opening of the Silk Road in the first century BC meant that knowledge of winemaking passed eastwards from the Middle East to China, while the idea of noodles moved in the opposite direction. The “Columbian exchange” of foodstuffs between the Old and New Worlds was second in importance in food history only to the adoption of agriculture.
New foods are generally regarded with suspicion, as potatoes were in 18th-century Europe and genetically modified crops are by many people in the 21st.
But we are living at the end of food history. Spices that once commanded exorbitant prices can now be found in the supermarket. Tomatoes and maize from the New World were unknown to the Romans but are now central to Italian cuisine. India is now the biggest producer of peanuts, a South American crop. China is the largest producer of wheat, a Middle Eastern crop, and of potatoes, originally from South America. Brazil dominates the production of coffee, originally from Ethiopia, and of sugar, originally from New Guinea.
“History on a Plate,” The Economist