Thoughts on Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
I have to say this book is my all time favorite, the amount of information I received from this book is not measurable, on top of that it made think, and question what I thought I know. An impressive experience, I have already recommended it to many of my friends and I will keep doing so.
Some people like to brag about their national food, but they tend to forget that what they consider to be their national food is not really theirs, in fact a couple years back the ingredients they use where not even available in their countries and they could not even name such ingredients if they would see them.
This reminds me of a passage of Sapiens.
Ethnic cuisine
In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinean restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated into just about everything and the highlight at any Swiss cafe is thick hot chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of these foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn’t been invented yet), William Tell never tasted chocolate and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more than 400 years ago. The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama.