USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Potatoes eventually became an important staple of the diet in much of Europe, contributing to an estimated 25% of the population growth in Afro-Eurasia between 1700 and 1900. Many European rulers, including Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia, encouraged the cultivation of the potato.

Detailed explanation-2: -Plants from the Americas transformed life in Europe, Asia, and Africa. They not only changed cuisine and culture but resulted in major economic and environmental shifts. This is because many of the new crops, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava, were calorically rich and quickly became staple crops.

Detailed explanation-3: -Food historian Lois Ellen Frank calls potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, and vanilla the “magic eight” ingredients that were found and used only in the Americas before 1492 and were taken via the Columbian Exchange back to the Old World, dramatically transforming the cuisine there.

Detailed explanation-4: -New World foods transformed European society by increasing agricultural yields and improving diets, thus stimulating population growth.

Detailed explanation-5: -The exchange introduced a wide range of new calorically rich staple crops to the Old World-namely potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, and cassava. The primary benefit of the New World staples was that they could be grown in Old World climates that were unsuitable for the cultivation of Old World staples.