新托福考试必备：新托福TPO（1-24）听力原文文本TPO10

　　Professor
　　So would it surprise you to learn that many of the food that we today consider
　　traditional European dishes that their key ingredients were not even known in
　　Europe until quite recently, until the European started trading with the native
　　people in North and South America? I mean, you probably aware that the
　　Americas provide Europe and Asia with food like squash, beans, turkey,
　　peanuts. But what about all those Italian tomato sauces, humgarengurush or
　　my favorite, French fries? Those yummy fried potatoes.

　　Student
　　Wait. I mean I knew potatoes were from where, South America?

　　Professor
　　South America. Right, the Andes Mountains.

　　Student
　　But you are saying tomatoes too? I just assume since there used to so many
　　Italian dishes.

　　Professor
　　No, like potatoes, Tomato grew widely in the Andes. Although unlike potatoes,
　　they weren’t originally cultivated there. That seems to occur first in Central
　　America. And even then the tomato doesn’t appear to have been very
　　important as a food plant until the European came on the scene. They took it
　　back to Europe with them around 1550. And Italy was indeed the first place
　　where it’s widely grown as food crop. So in a sense, it really is more Italian
　　than American. And another thing and this is true of both potato and tomato.
　　Both of the plants are members of Nightshade family. The Nightshade family is
　　a category of plants which also includes many that you wouldn’t want to eat,
　　like mandrake, belladonna, and even tobacco. So it’s no wonder that people
　　once considered potatoes and tomatoes to be inedible too, even poisonous.
　　And in fact, the leaves of the potato plant are quite toxic. So, too it took both
　　plants quite a while to catch on in Europe. And even longer before it made a
　　return trip to North America and became popular food items here.

　　Student
　　Yeah, you know, I remember, I remember my grandmother telling me that
　　when her mother was a little girl, a lot of people still thought tomatoes are
　　poisonous.

　　Professor
　　Oh, sure. People didn’t really start eating them here until the mid-eighteen
　　hundreds.
　　Student
　　But seems like I heard didn’t Tom Jefferson grow them or something?

　　Professor
　　Well, that’s true. But then Jefferson is known not only as the third president of
　　the United States but also as a scholar who was way ahead of his time in many
　　ways. He didn’t let the conventional thinking of his day restrain his ideas.
　　Now, potatoes went through a similar sort of rejection process, especially
　　when they were first introduced in Europe. You know how potatoes can turn
　　green if they are left in the light too long? And that green of skin can make the
　　potatoes tastes bitter; even make you ill. So that was enough to put people off
　　for over 200 years. Yes, Bill?

　　Student
　　I’m sorry professor Jones. But I mean yeah ok. American crops have probably
　　contributed a lot to European cooking over the years. But…

　　Professor
　　But have they really played any kind of important role in European history?
　　Well, as a matter of fact, yes. I was just coming to that. Let’s start with North
　　American corn or maize, as it’s often called. Now before the Europeans made
　　any contact with the Americas, they subsist mainly on grains, grains that often
　　suffered from crop failures. And largely for this reason, the political power in
　　Europe was centered for centuries in the South, around the Mediterranean
　　Sea which was where they could grow these grains with more reliability. But
　　when corn came to Europe from Mexico, wow, now they had a much hardier
　　crop that could be grown easily in more northerly climates and centers of
　　power began to shift accordingly. And then, well as I said potatoes weren’t
　　really popular at first. But when they finally catch on which they did in Ireland
　　around 1780. Well, why do you suppose it happen? Because potatoes have
　　the ability to provide abundant and extremely nutritious food crop, no other
　　crop grew in North Europe at the time had anything like the number of vitamins
　　contained in potatoes. Plus, potatoes grow on the single acre of land could
　　feed many more people than say, wheat grow on the same land. Potatoes
　　soon spread to France and other Northern European countries. And as a result,
　　the nutrition of the general population improved tremendously and population
　　soared in the early 1800 and so the shift of power from southern to northern
　　Europe continued.