Have you ever wondered what our ancestors ate and where their foods came from? How many food-based plants grew wild, and how many of these foods were improved through cultivation?

Another question is how is it possible that some of the same foods that grew wild in South America have also been available to sustain huge numbers of people in China, Russia and India?

A new, comprehensive study, called "Origins of Food Crops Connect Countries Worldwide,"¹ tackled these concepts on a grand scale by determining, for the most part, where many of our planet's main food crops originated.

In many areas of the world researchers found that some plants intermingled with domesticated or cultivated varieties. Several nearly identical foods appear to have originated in different areas of the world, perhaps because some seed crops were carried to new regions thousands of years ago.

Lead researcher Colin Khoury, who studies plants at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), said their calculations affirmed what they were already convinced of — that "our entire food system is completely global."

As a basis for their research, the team began piecing together what they already knew, based on the work of Russian scientist Nikolai Vavilov, who in the 1920s explored the ways specific geographical regions around the world contributed to the way people ate.

Where Did Our Food Crops Originate, and What's Changed?

Vavilov deduced that areas where crops were domesticated millennia ago, say in Eastern Asia or South America, produced greater diversity. As NPR explains it:

"The region where a crop had been domesticated would be marked by the greatest diversity of that crop, because farmers there would have been selecting different types for the longest time. Diversity, along with the presence of that crop's wild relatives, marked the center of origin."²

Using the genetics, phytogeography, botany and linguistics studies amassed by scientists over the last century, Khoury and his team set about identifying where the foods that sustained different cultures and successive generations had originated.

As a matter of fact, more than two-thirds of the crops eaten by people from any given geographical region originally came from someplace else — sometimes from far away or even another continent.

Thai chiles, for instance, actually originated in Central America. Tomatoes, usually associated with Italy, came from the Andes Mountain area.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica,³ radiocarbon dating indicates that early agriculture may date back to about 8,000 B.C., if not earlier. The Fertile Crescent, roughly encompassing the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin, has cultivated wheat and barley related to wild grasses since about the 9th century B.C.

The New 'Globalized Diet'

Khoury's group found in earlier data and studies from the last 50 years that what has been thought of as an area's "local cuisine" has begun to blend. The "standard global diet" now depends on a much smaller number of basic crops for a lot more of its food. As reported by NPR:

"All over the world, people are eating a bigger variety of foods. But until now, no one had crunched the numbers to see whether global diets were overall getting less — or more — diverse …

Over the last 50 years, the global diet has shifted dramatically, including greater amounts of major oil crops and lesser quantities of regionally important staples."⁴

The scientists found two trends that have begun impacting the calorie contribution to the collective diet, as well as other factors, and therefore peoples' overall health:

• In some areas of the world, people are eating a greater variety of foods and depend less on what their region has traditionally relied on for millennia as a main food source.

For example, fewer people in China eat rice, while in the U.S., imported foods like coconut water and mangoes are now more commonplace.

• All over the globe, what we know as the "standard Western diet," including more wheat, potatoes and dairy products than most traditional diets, is available in every major city, from Cairo to Shanghai.

Simultaneously, "mega crops," such as tropically-derived palm oil, are becoming more similar to each other. NPR notes:

"Smaller crops, meanwhile, are getting pushed aside. Sorghum and millet, for instance, are grown quite widely around the world, but they're losing out to corn and soybeans. Other small crops that you only find in certain areas could disappear altogether."⁵