The history in your dish

Living in the modern 21st century, has made us take many things we have nowadays for granted. Almost every kind of first necessity products can be found on the store across the street, and for the most demanding cravings, products from all over the world can be found in specialty stores in almost every country: it is the globalized era in which borders have become diffuse. Twenty years ago, buying an import in a country like my own, apart of being considered a complete luxury, would have been unaffordable. Probably the best way to depict this is to talk about the food we see in our tables everyday. Which of the many things we eat on a daily basis has been part of our culture for a long time?
Did you ever imagine that before the sixteenth century (and probably much later), chocolate was unknown in Europe? Or could you even think that ancient American cultures did not have red meat as part of their daily diet? (In the case of Mexican natives, they did not even know the horse).
During the whole first half of the fifteenth century, many European scientists and explorers looked for different ways of sailing to the Indies in order to find an easy way to bring spices into their countries. Spices played a very important role in those years, when perishable food had to be spiced and salted in order to be preserved during summer and warm months. This fact however, turned into a much more lucrative enterprise than spice trading: the first explorations of the unknown lands of America financed mainly by the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, later on the British started their own explorations, with the settlement of the Spanish in the Island of Cuba, it was possible to expand towards continental America, and on August 13th, 1521, the great Aztec empire was officially defeated and taken over by the Spanish Crown. During those years, Spanish explorations towards the Pacific Ocean were done, and the actual Philippines were annexed to the Spanish Empire.

In 1535, the Spanish administration of Charles V, sent a Viceroy to organize the ever growing production of his colonies, establishing the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Actual Mexico, Central America, and The Philippines), the Viceroyalty of Peru (Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), and the Viceroyalty of La Plata (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile). Later on, Peru and New Spain were divided, and Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador became the Viceroyalty of New Granada.

The establishment of Viceroyalties did not only become the best way of pulling the mineral goods out of America, but also starting the exchange of new products between America and Asia, and Spain (which later sold goods to other European countries without American possessions). It can be therefore said that this fact set the preliminaries of globalization and international trade.
British, Spanish, Portuguese, and much later the Dutch sailors became famous for bringing wealth and exotic goods to the old lands: maize, tomato, pumpkin, nuts, maple, cotton, squash, peppers, bean, sunflower, peanut, avocado, potato, chocolate, sugar cane, tobacco, and chicle (the predecessor of modern chewing gum) along with unknown fowl species, such as turkey, were among the many new products in Europe. In exchange, horses and cattle were brought in addition to the modernity of the old continent into the Americas, the later, only used in most of the cases by the European families that settled there in search of new fortune.

Among the many examples, there is the one of the actual tomato which did not exist in Europe until the 1600’s, the name comes from the ancient Mexican language called Náhuatl: xitómatl which means round plump fruit with navel, other mutations of the original yellow fruit, much similar to the larger tomatoes of nowadays were found in Central America. The name “jitomate”, which is still used in Mexico for the red tomato, later evolved into tomate. Spanish distributed tomato in Asia, and Europe, where its cultivation became successful on Mediterranean weathers. In Italy, the early American tomatoes were named pomodoro (Golden Apple), because of their golden color, and it was the Italian monks of Naples who hold the honour of having written the first recipe that contains tomato. Currently, China, U.S., and Turkey are the top three producers of Tomato in the world. Avocado, shares a similar history too, curiously, avocado’s name in Spanish is aguacate, which derives from the Náhuatl word ahuácatl that stands for testicle.

Chocolate as we know it has nothing to do with the chocolate consumed by the prehispanic cultures of America. Almost every pre-Columbian culture prepared Cacao infusions with religious and medicinal purpuses. The Xocoatl (bitter water), as the Aztecs called it, was a drink prepared with Cacao, and was taken spicy and hot by the nobles. Cacao was also used by the Aztecs as a currency, and its value was much higher than gold. Chocolate later was exported into Europe, and became the beverage of choice of the courts. Cacao harvesting later became a very profitable activity, in which field workers were overslaved in order to enhance the production. African workforce was also used in the Cacao fields. The popularity of the drink grew through the years, and in 1689, Doctor Hans Sloan in Jamaica developed a medicinal chocolate drink which contained milk. Chocolate treats of today are a result of the first industrial revolution, in which the use of heat and machines facilitated the production of tablets.
Chicle, which is the Spanish word for chewing gum, derives from the Hule tree from Central America. It was a resin that was chewed by the natives to clean the teeth. This later was flavoured and industrialized in favour of the sugared gum. Modern gums however do not contain chicle.

The introduction of cattle in America is also a result of this trade. Hoofed animals were not domesticated by the ancient American tribes, and it is said that when the conquistadors arrived to Mexico City, Aztecs acknowledged them as gods because of a prophecy that said that their main deity whose skin was whiter than theirs, would be back riding a four legged beast, which shows that Aztecs did not know horses before the Spanish settlements.

Coffee was grown firstly in Ethiopia during the 9th century, and later, its production spread to Egypt where it became famous in the Muslim World. The next to try it were the Italian, and from there it found its way through Europe, Indonesia, and America. Marihuana was first planted in the Middle East; aniseed, macadamia, and eucalyptus come from the South Pacific; and peach, plums, rhubarb, kiwifruit and coconuts, are original from the Far East.

Whatever it is we are having for dinner, it is not probably from our homelands. The fact that we are able to have it fresh, and sold on a store just around the corner, is a result of history and technological developments. Countries that do not have the soil or climatic conditions for growing several products would become world number one producers, while the product’s birthplace does not even remember they used to produce it. Those are the tricks this fast growing world plays on everyone.

LOVE: Where did all the sad stories go?

Since the beginning of times, a great deal of the history of the world has been powered by one of the most complex feelings (or sometimes by the lack of it), and it is only those stories where love is depicted as the creator of something great that we remember as heart-warming tales. But what about all those stories where love is not the winner? What about all those times where love did not conquered, and nobody won? Those forsaken stories are part of our own history as relational beings, and they like to be forgotten because, as much as love is soothing, it is also very painful: it is this bittersweet feeling where you exchange moments of the greatest grief for a few moments of the biggest joy in which one gets as close as it gets to heaven.
But this is about all these other stories where love did not win, about going deep into this frustrating emotion and knowing how natural it is to loose in this game of love. This emotion of loss is felt at least once by every person in the world, and no matter how natural, it is still one of the worst pains. From all of your body parts, the most vulnerable of all is that one that stands for the heart, not the one that beats the blood around the body, but the one that feels. This abstract heart that lies within the hidden parts of your mind is the one that cries loudly every time love is gone.
The pain of the heart comes always with disappointment, and these feelings altogether produce nasty physical sensations. I once heard that when in love, the human brain produces a very big amount of chemical substances that generate pleasure, called PEA’s (for Phenylethylamines). The point of producing PEA’s is to generate positive stimuli on the body and maintain the person alert, this later is traduced by the brain as something good and will want to repeat the experience (it is supposed to be a natural selection and adaptation mechanism so species can reproduce themselves), furthermore, PEA’s, which are chemically related to the amphetamine drug family, also produce dependence, and when there is no PEA’s on the brain, the person will be submerged into something similar to a drug suppression syndrome (physiological reaction that causes big anxiety to get the drug on the organism). Among the everyday stuff that contains PEA’s, chocolate is the one that contains one of the highest concentrations, that is why, according to some scientists, some people tend to eat in order to cure the pain of their hearts.
Once, a friend of mine told me that love is a friendship set on fire, and there’s nothing like burning along with somebody at the same time, but just like any other burn, it hurts too much when the fire is gone, this means that one must make an effort to keep this fire alive. Nevertheless, sometimes letting it go off is the best thing to be done. We all listen to the stories of our grandparents, where the fire was kept alive for more than 60 years, yet how many times were they burnt before, or how many fires did they have to put out in their own years?
The thing with love is that in order to get it right, one must shoot blindly many times, and if you don’t know your target or you cannot even see it, the chances of getting the right shot are much reduced. Some people even spend their whole lives shooting, looking for the right person, and finally die without any victory. I would guess it is wise to take a potentially good chance trying to make it the right person just to see if things work out, and then, probably the fire will die within a long time, or maybe it will be a short time, it is impossible to know, but it is an acknowledged fact that he who accepts to love, accepts to suffer as well. You can’t have one thing without the other, at least not in this world.
The only time we hear about these sad stories is when we pay close attention to everyday music, stories of betrayal and pain are painted at least in every album in this world, and this makes evident how natural it is to suffer for love. I could write a huge list of songs speaking about tragic breakups, and getting over someone. Probably the most common cause of pain in this world is love and the lack of it. People killing for surviving, families being separated because of wars, children starving to death, it is all about the love that is missing, this on the other hand, does not make minimal the pain of everyday love.
So when love is gone, where do the broken hearts go? They probably go home, turn the TV on while eating a whole box of chocolate, others lock to themselves, some others go and drown their pain in a bar, and others decide never to love again. In other words, they go and grieve their own way. So now that you are lying on the couch crying with a cheesy film, while you eat whatever you found in the larder and fridge, look at how you are not alone, how everybody has suffered what you are going through, and believe me, it shall pass. If you decided you’ll never fall in love again, you are living in a big lie as well, because tomorrow when you forget about this problem, you will see another someone who will make your heart skip some beats.
In the big picture, we forget about this stories, because there will always be a whole new different and great story later on, none of them the same, and all of them unforgettable, because in the end, it is all about the great stuff. And it is up to us to be decided to suffer awful weeks for enjoying the best days, I do believe it is worth it, because on the final balance, the one best day weights far more than a handful of terrible weeks.

...Being what you eat... What's the best to be?

“You are what you eat”, must be one of the most popular phrases of the last decade. Ever since medical research has proven that one of the (many) reasons of why in the past years the incidence rates of many deadly diseases, namely cancer and diabetes, have raised is the disorganized, hurried, and unbalanced food intake, food industries have turned their heads to a new market niche dedicated to convince everybody that healthy people eat healthy food, and that whatever they sell is not only innocuous, but improves many bodily functions, and therefore, if you want to be one of those healthy people, you must run and buy those things.

Whenever I hear “you are what you eat” I cannot think of anything else but a tall skinny woman dressed in a white baby doll eating with one hand a 0 calorie yogurt while admiring a zen landscape, and rubbing her flat abs with the other. This image, brought partly by the actual mistaken concept of beauty, and partly by the need of a new market, is the one that has distorted the whole idea of healthy eating, selling the idea that eating more and more highly processed food, that has no calories, is the key to loosing weight, or looking healthy.

It is no news that the point of marketing campaigns is selling no matter what, and companies will do everything in their power, and this includes lying to their customers, in order to boost their sales up, and this is no different within the food industries.

Among the many curious marketing manipulations in the food industries, I like to quote the one that appears in certain cereal that holds a big feline as an image: “No Cholesterol” it says in a yellow box on the upper right side of the container, making you think that the company, because is so concerned about your health, has invested in a process that takes the cholesterol away from the cereal, the trick however, lies in the fact that the cereal never had any cholesterol on it simply because vegetal cells do not carry any significant amount of cholesterol molecules on them.

Healthy eating does not involve stopping eating any kind of food, but eating everything at the right time and the right amount along with physical activity. The right time varies according to what you are eating: it’s not the same thing to eat the same steak in the morning, at noon, or at night, mainly because if you eat it late at night, apart of having an upset stomach, the digestion process will not occur with the same efficiency as during the day, and certainly eating it first thing in the morning may cause you some acidity. The right amount is not the same for every person: some people reportedly need more complex carbohydrates than others due to their high physical activity during the day; some others need more vegetal fibre given the size of their stomach.

On personal experience I can tell that, strict diets turn out unsuccessful because they cannot be followed for long periods of time, and when broken, the body stores everything whatever it receives, making it harder every time. The modern theories state that healthy eating includes the combination of every food group, and that the persistent lack of any of them might lead to a number of disorders. Preference also becomes a problem when it comes to combining food groups: not liking one thing does not always mean you can pass on it, for instance, many people, hate fish and seafood due to the strong taste given by the presence of nitrogen, but since fish has many substances that cannot be found anywhere else, it should be eaten at least twice a month by every person.

Being what you eat holds a much deeper meaning to itself than not eating fats or carbs, it goes more on the way of knowing what to eat, and when to eat it. Eating eight pieces of bread, a slice of pizza, with a diet coke is as unhealthy as eating a cucumber, with a glass of water, not eating any meat is as unhealthy as eating red meat everyday, or drinking no water is as bad as drinking ten litres of it.

It is the obsessive seek of wealth that has taken man to look for head blowing ways of obtaining money to the point where it has reached an industry where health is at stake, furthermore, the huge amount of information that travels so rapidly around the world and reaches the wrong ears, creates a worried vulnerable population that will do whatever it takes not to fall in a negative category. When it comes to eating, just sit back and enjoy what you are given, it is just a matter of being organized and controlling the amounts and times.

picture taken from www.hormigacocinera.com,