[updated 8th August] weed, def. "any plant growing where it is not wanted". This certainly does not mean it is useless - just that it's in the way as far as the intended use of the garden/plot/field/area of land.
Italy was created (unified) in 1871; before that it was roughly 1,400 years since it was last in one piece – as the Holy Roman Empire. In between were a lot of wars where the Spanish, French, Austrians, Normans, Celts, Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, even the Muslims took over parts (Sicily). Captain Cook found Australia in 1770 (he wasn't the first). Columbus landed in America in 1492 (he wasn't the first either) [that sort of twisting of historical facts is called Eurocentricism, where they bend the truth to make European Christians appear superior].
But before then, here's a list of stuff that is uniquely indigenous to the Americas and had never been seen in Europe... or India... (amazing how little time it takes for something to be adopted as traditional cuisine!). Just picture, before 1492 most of these New World foodstuffs had ever been seen anywhere else in the Old World... including tomatoes, which are not 'Italian' by any stretch of the imagination...
Nightshade family:
Tomato
Potato
Capsicum
Chilli pepper
Tobacco (there is wild tobacco elsewhere eg Australia but it was introduced)
Legumes, grains, pseudo-grains:
Lima, pinto, kidney beans
Corn, sweet corn
Quinoa
Amaranth
Chia
Manioc (or cassava)
Chocolate
Vanilla
Cocaine
Quinine
Tonka beans
Fruits, nuts, seeds, other:
Pineapple
Strawberry
Agave
Cotton
Passionfruit
Papaya
Cranberry
Blueberry
Huckleberry
Guava
Peanut
Cashew
Pecan
Sunflower
Sweet potato (not yams from Afro-Asia)
Cucurbits:
(although - this category is not exclusive to the Americas. Different species of gourds, melons and squashes are found separately in both the Old and New Worlds ie. Eastern and Western Hemispheres)
Pumpkin (also known as winter squash; there are gourds, squashes and melons native to Asia that are similar but different)
Zucchini aka summer squash, courgettes etc
Gourds (some gourds are also from Africa and India ie calabash, possibly by seeds floating across the sea either way; exact origin unknown)
Note# Melons - muskmelons, cantalope, honeydew, etc were one of the few things actually introduced by Columbus INTO the Americas! (watermelons are African, not American) Known sometimes as the Columbian Interchange, here is a list of introduced species going both ways.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
[How I love globalisation! Now, all you lurid greenies take one step back and calm down. It's all a part of Nature, ffs. Stop thinking "invasive species", "weed infestation" and "non-indigenous". If you don't assimilate, acclimatise and evolve, you won't survive. The geographical separation of species is mainly a post-Ice Age recent phenomenon. In terms of Earth's history it is a blink of the eye, yet you are crying out sacrilege. Nothing is going to stop the intermingling of continental flora and fauna. Whatcha gonna do, impose quarantine on the whole damn planet? Get Real! Globalisation is unavoidable.]
Westerners think of curry as being too hot but that is only a recent invention. For thousands of years before chilli was introduced there were two main kinds of pepper - the black/white/green/red (Piper nigrum) one which we are all familiar with, used often as a seasoning after the dish is prepared/cooked; and the long pepper, Piper longum, hotter and usually added at the beginning, fried in ghee.
The third - the extremely hot chilli pepper - wasn't introduced to India (by the Portuguese) and Europe (Cristoforo Colombo was actually Italian and his voyages to the Americas were financed by the Spanish Government!) until post-Columbian days. All three peppers have different reactions to bodily functions. Chilli is the most useless medicinally (apart from caosaicin as an analgesic) as it causes bowel irritation and profuse perspiration, more suited to inducing remedial sweating in equatorial climates. The other traditional peppers however have great nutritional properties, adding enzymes that aid digestion and therefore assimilation of nutrients.
It is important to acknowledge that simple condiments like salt and pepper go a long way in providing health benefits besides their welcome taste (the body's senses in accord with Brahman, the Universal Whole). Salt (NaCl or sodium chloride) provides the essential component of gastric juice (HCl or hydrochloric acid - the hydrogen component comes from water H20) and the peppers provide the enzymes (reactive agents) that break down the complex molecules like proteins into smaller amino acids that can be absorbed by the wall of the gastrointestinal tract.
The gut wall is a semi-permeable membrane which has tiny pores in it, filtering out large molecules and allowing smaller ones to pass through into the bloodstream. Ideally the size of these is about 9 to 12 Å (Angstrom = 0.1 nanometres). Leaky Gut Syndrome is a hypothetical condition (I have done the polyethyl glycol PEG400 test and failed healthy pore size). Gut health is maintained by beneficial bacteria who repair damage to membranes and attack the culprits. Incidentally, Caesarian babies miss out on this vital flora which is passed from mother to child in the vagina. As a result, Caesarian children have much higher rates of gut-flora-deficient-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, food allergies etc - contentiously, perhaps even coeliac disease, autism, schizophrenia!
Modern medical research is currently conducting studies into the role of the microbiota - the fad word is microbiome, the living environment of the bacteria - and only now starting to connect the dots. Dr Andrew Wakefield, the much maligned vaccination scapegoat first made this connection in the 90s when he drew attention to violation of the blood brain barrier as a result of trauma to the gut. Whether or not his methods were unscrupulous is besides the point. He made the connection between gut bacteria/blood brain barrier/mental health, and that's all that matters. I doubt he'll ever be recognised or reinstated because that would be like the medical profession admitting that they'd killed their own bastard son.
He's not totally crackers, though. ABC Nightlife interviewed Dr Michael Moseley the other night, who is pretty much repeating the same things - just uncredited to Wakefield. The basics are that there are thousands, millions of microbiota that inhabit the gut and affect health. In Andrew Wakefield making that initial connection, especially regarding the potential blood brain barrier, much of the information has been lost. Moselely seems to be more or less backing up Wakefield's original findings - yet unrecognised and uncredited. The ABC says they're gonna put up a podcast soon of their conversation, but I can't find it yet. It takes more than 3 days to put up a podcast and 2 weeks to rescue a soccer team stranded in a cave. Yet God created the whole Universe in 6 days and then found time to take a break. And they put a man on the moon in 1969. Ha ha.
Anyway, back to the point of this post. It's amazing to think that it's only in the last couple of hundred years that we have been able to embrace "GLOBAL" as a concept. Before then it had no meaning. Think about it. They thought there was nothing over the horizon.
Or did they? Sailors knew from centuries of observing distant ships sink and disappear over the horizon that the Earth was curved, a Globe. Columbus had absolutely no fear that they would sail off the edge of the world. The fabricated lore that the earth was flat is mostly a myth and was never prevalent. How to confuse the masses, pretend that humans evolved from apes, invented fire and the wheel, and then moved on to discovering God.
My giddy Aunt, what a load of hogwash!
Italy was created (unified) in 1871; before that it was roughly 1,400 years since it was last in one piece – as the Holy Roman Empire. In between were a lot of wars where the Spanish, French, Austrians, Normans, Celts, Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, even the Muslims took over parts (Sicily). Captain Cook found Australia in 1770 (he wasn't the first). Columbus landed in America in 1492 (he wasn't the first either) [that sort of twisting of historical facts is called Eurocentricism, where they bend the truth to make European Christians appear superior].
But before then, here's a list of stuff that is uniquely indigenous to the Americas and had never been seen in Europe... or India... (amazing how little time it takes for something to be adopted as traditional cuisine!). Just picture, before 1492 most of these New World foodstuffs had ever been seen anywhere else in the Old World... including tomatoes, which are not 'Italian' by any stretch of the imagination...
Nightshade family:
Tomato
Potato
Capsicum
Chilli pepper
Tobacco (there is wild tobacco elsewhere eg Australia but it was introduced)
Legumes, grains, pseudo-grains:
Lima, pinto, kidney beans
Corn, sweet corn
Quinoa
Amaranth
Chia
Manioc (or cassava)
Chocolate
Vanilla
Cocaine
Quinine
Tonka beans
Fruits, nuts, seeds, other:
Pineapple
Strawberry
Agave
Cotton
Passionfruit
Papaya
Cranberry
Blueberry
Huckleberry
Guava
Peanut
Cashew
Pecan
Sunflower
Sweet potato (not yams from Afro-Asia)
Cucurbits:
(although - this category is not exclusive to the Americas. Different species of gourds, melons and squashes are found separately in both the Old and New Worlds ie. Eastern and Western Hemispheres)
Pumpkin (also known as winter squash; there are gourds, squashes and melons native to Asia that are similar but different)
Zucchini aka summer squash, courgettes etc
Gourds (some gourds are also from Africa and India ie calabash, possibly by seeds floating across the sea either way; exact origin unknown)
Note# Melons - muskmelons, cantalope, honeydew, etc were one of the few things actually introduced by Columbus INTO the Americas! (watermelons are African, not American) Known sometimes as the Columbian Interchange, here is a list of introduced species going both ways.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
[How I love globalisation! Now, all you lurid greenies take one step back and calm down. It's all a part of Nature, ffs. Stop thinking "invasive species", "weed infestation" and "non-indigenous". If you don't assimilate, acclimatise and evolve, you won't survive. The geographical separation of species is mainly a post-Ice Age recent phenomenon. In terms of Earth's history it is a blink of the eye, yet you are crying out sacrilege. Nothing is going to stop the intermingling of continental flora and fauna. Whatcha gonna do, impose quarantine on the whole damn planet? Get Real! Globalisation is unavoidable.]
Westerners think of curry as being too hot but that is only a recent invention. For thousands of years before chilli was introduced there were two main kinds of pepper - the black/white/green/red (Piper nigrum) one which we are all familiar with, used often as a seasoning after the dish is prepared/cooked; and the long pepper, Piper longum, hotter and usually added at the beginning, fried in ghee.
The third - the extremely hot chilli pepper - wasn't introduced to India (by the Portuguese) and Europe (Cristoforo Colombo was actually Italian and his voyages to the Americas were financed by the Spanish Government!) until post-Columbian days. All three peppers have different reactions to bodily functions. Chilli is the most useless medicinally (apart from caosaicin as an analgesic) as it causes bowel irritation and profuse perspiration, more suited to inducing remedial sweating in equatorial climates. The other traditional peppers however have great nutritional properties, adding enzymes that aid digestion and therefore assimilation of nutrients.
It is important to acknowledge that simple condiments like salt and pepper go a long way in providing health benefits besides their welcome taste (the body's senses in accord with Brahman, the Universal Whole). Salt (NaCl or sodium chloride) provides the essential component of gastric juice (HCl or hydrochloric acid - the hydrogen component comes from water H20) and the peppers provide the enzymes (reactive agents) that break down the complex molecules like proteins into smaller amino acids that can be absorbed by the wall of the gastrointestinal tract.
The gut wall is a semi-permeable membrane which has tiny pores in it, filtering out large molecules and allowing smaller ones to pass through into the bloodstream. Ideally the size of these is about 9 to 12 Å (Angstrom = 0.1 nanometres). Leaky Gut Syndrome is a hypothetical condition (I have done the polyethyl glycol PEG400 test and failed healthy pore size). Gut health is maintained by beneficial bacteria who repair damage to membranes and attack the culprits. Incidentally, Caesarian babies miss out on this vital flora which is passed from mother to child in the vagina. As a result, Caesarian children have much higher rates of gut-flora-deficient-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, food allergies etc - contentiously, perhaps even coeliac disease, autism, schizophrenia!
Modern medical research is currently conducting studies into the role of the microbiota - the fad word is microbiome, the living environment of the bacteria - and only now starting to connect the dots. Dr Andrew Wakefield, the much maligned vaccination scapegoat first made this connection in the 90s when he drew attention to violation of the blood brain barrier as a result of trauma to the gut. Whether or not his methods were unscrupulous is besides the point. He made the connection between gut bacteria/blood brain barrier/mental health, and that's all that matters. I doubt he'll ever be recognised or reinstated because that would be like the medical profession admitting that they'd killed their own bastard son.
He's not totally crackers, though. ABC Nightlife interviewed Dr Michael Moseley the other night, who is pretty much repeating the same things - just uncredited to Wakefield. The basics are that there are thousands, millions of microbiota that inhabit the gut and affect health. In Andrew Wakefield making that initial connection, especially regarding the potential blood brain barrier, much of the information has been lost. Moselely seems to be more or less backing up Wakefield's original findings - yet unrecognised and uncredited. The ABC says they're gonna put up a podcast soon of their conversation, but I can't find it yet. It takes more than 3 days to put up a podcast and 2 weeks to rescue a soccer team stranded in a cave. Yet God created the whole Universe in 6 days and then found time to take a break. And they put a man on the moon in 1969. Ha ha.
Anyway, back to the point of this post. It's amazing to think that it's only in the last couple of hundred years that we have been able to embrace "GLOBAL" as a concept. Before then it had no meaning. Think about it. They thought there was nothing over the horizon.
Or did they? Sailors knew from centuries of observing distant ships sink and disappear over the horizon that the Earth was curved, a Globe. Columbus had absolutely no fear that they would sail off the edge of the world. The fabricated lore that the earth was flat is mostly a myth and was never prevalent. How to confuse the masses, pretend that humans evolved from apes, invented fire and the wheel, and then moved on to discovering God.
My giddy Aunt, what a load of hogwash!
