Assignment task: Please read carefully; this is a harder question to think about in terms of how it affects you.
Look up indigenous foods of the Americas- foods like chocolate, corn, turkey, cranberries, maple syrup, acorns, chilies, tomatoes will come up.
Take that food and trace how it is used in the Americas by one of two cultures old and new cultures.
Then take the food and see how we export or it was taken to another country and used there.
Example:
Chocolate- cacao comes from South America. It can be grown on the equator area of the Earth.
The Mayans and the Aztecs used the cacao beans to make a drink like coffee - a little spicy but not a lot of sugar or dairy. They also traded and used the cacao beans as a form of currency. Mexicans today use the cacao to help flavor their moles, make a form of chocolate by adding some cinnamon, and also to make drinks. Chocolate has evolved into a big candy business around the world. In addition many countries grow cacao plants and it has become a huge part of their economy.
When chocolate was taken to the old world Europe, a lot of candy developed (like the famous Belgium chocolate companies), but chocolate has to be grown in a tropical climate. Many European companies introduced it to African countries to grow once they were colonized. Today chocolate industry faces many challenges including climate global warming, plus child labor use, and farmers not being paid enough to live on.
What was interesting to me is that cacao was here in the Americas- went to Europe where they loved it and started trying to figure out to make it more palatable to them- namely at add sugar and dairy, then it came back to the now United States- for example Hershey Milk Chocolate a candy icon for Americans. They even have their own city Hershey Pennsylvania.