Food transformations in Italy in the 17th-19th Centuries

     This week’s readings and lecture material took different foods, in various contexts, to show the transformation of the Italian, European, and global food supply in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Nunn and Qian gave a detailed history of the Columbian Exchange. In Istanbul, we learned about the Triangular Trade and its effects, particularly sugar and the new plantations the New World. This reading discussed in detail the positive outcomes of the Columbian Exchange: the increased availability of food to more of the population, access to new crops, and the profitability that landed in Europe, which likely fueled the Industrial Revolution. This part of history is very important for understanding today’s globalized food system. What I find even more interesting and important are the negative consequences of the Columbian Exchange, particularly its legacy in Africa and the Americas. As slaves were captured and imported to work  on the sugar plantations in the Americas, population plummeted and social opportunities declined in Africa. This likely stunted much of the potential for Africa to develop and protect themselves from colonization. In North America, a legacy of racism and modern-day slaves is a still-present result of this exchange. In Istanbul, we learned of how the sugar produced on the plantations in the Americas made up a great deal of Europeans’ diets in the 17th and 18th centuries. This week’s reading brought up another indirect consequence of the Columbian Exchange, quinine, which kept British colonizers from dying of malaria in the conquest for Africa. This was the first I had learned on quinine, and I am surprised because it seems like an influential new product. Tying this back to Europe, the improved nutrition of the European population (increased calories from sugar), can not be ignored in the study of the development of the global food system.

            The History of the Tomato also ties to the Columbian Exchange reading as tomatoes are an example of a truly global food, consumed by both New World and Old World countries. However, it hasn’t always been a widely eaten food. The History of the Tomato delineated the changing attitude toward fruits and vegetables in the Late Renaissance and how the understanding of the process of digestion changed. The departure from the Galenic humoral notion and the change in medicine to what we now understand as Western medicine, opened up space for the field of gastronomy- the study of eating well. Today, we see tomatoes as a common, almost unavoidable fruit that we understand as healthy because of the lycopene. It is almost ubiquitous in Italy, and in America as well, although the tomatoes there are far less flavorful and nutritious because of their production. In Italy, since I have been here, I have seen it in soup, pastas of every kind, on pizza, in antipasto like brushetta, and in panini. All of these ways of eating tomatoes would have been unheard of before the late Renaissance and the adaptation and acculturation of tomatoes into the Italian diet. In America, I can not eat raw tomatoes- I am physically repulsed by their sour and watery taste, but here, they are flavorful and tasty. When I bite into a tomato here, it s not sour juice that I taste, it’s more salty and doesn’t taste like water at all. The color of red is deeper than those in America, this is because in America, they are picked when they are still green and shipped across the country and sprayed with ethylene gas to make them ripen- sot hey are not naturally flavorful there. Here, they taste pleasant, they are a treat. I thought I already knew quite a lot about the history of tomatoes, but my knowledge was only about tomatoes in the Americas, so this reading really helped me understand how even the tomato, a key ingredient in Italian cooking today, is relatively new to Italian cuisine. It is an important crop to the Spanish as well, and this reading gave an interesting history of the Spanish and French influences on the Italian appropriation of the fruit.

            Serao’s “What They Eat” gave a different context to the food transformations occurring in Italy in the past centuries. The journalistic description of the sale and consumption of pizza in Naples, contrasted to the failing pizzeria in Rome, was a symbolic picture of the regional cuisine differences in Italy. What arose as a quench to hunger in Naples manifested differently in its reproductions, even within the same country. In class, our close reading of this article allowed us to see the scene as a piece of art and analyze it for its historical and artistic contexts.

            In conclusion, all of this week’s material gave valuable insight into the big transformations that occurred in a relatively short period of time in Europe, and in particular,  Italy. Even Castelvetro’s short piece took an alternate perspective of health and vegetables in Italy. Since all of these perspectives are varied, just as they continue to be varied today, there is room for discussion on the changing future of food in Italy.

Vegetable chili I made with lots of Italian tomatoes!