THE FOOD EXPLORER : THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE GLOBE-TROTTING BOTANIST WHO TRANSFORMED WHAT AMERICA EATS
by Daniel Stone 

Here in America we have quite an amount of different kinds of food to eat and enjoy in sufficient amounts. Most people would probably think that it was always this way. Not at all. In the early part of the nineteenth century American meals were pretty basic and bland. There were no spices and no sauces. Fruits and vegetables were rare. Anything that grew from the soil was rejected. People ate to subsist. Things started to change by the end of the nineteenth century. Appetites began to broaden as companies like Pillsbury, Heinz, Lipton, et al, appeared with new inventions to make food preparation more user friendly and less as a chore. This was the time of the Gilded Age in the United States, when it became a powerhouse in industrialization. It enabled people to travel far and wide over oceans and into countries. One of the many would be a young botanist named David Fairchild. Fruit was his job and he wanted to explore the world to check out foods that could help American farmers and would delight people's palates. He would travel to more than fifty countries, tasting, savoring, collecting the seeds, and shipping them back to the United States. So what you see in supermarkets and farmers' markets originated in other countries. Thanks to Fairchild it's quite a variety. He's the one, after all, that gave the United States avocados. (They were originally from Chile.) Also on the list are: peaches (from China), red seedless grapes (Italy), wheat (Spain), kale (Croatia), and much more. Fairchild came along at the right time and we have much to thank him for.
The Food Explorer is a wonderful book. There is so much fascinating information about the history of food when America was barely one hundred years old and then onward. Plenty of interesting food trivia. Chapter two talks about what exactly is a fruit and sweetness has nothing to do with it. One of the things you learn about is the Meyer lemon (yes, it was actually named for somebody and he had to get a patent for it). This lemon originated in Peking, China. Fairchild didn't just bring back food. Those cherry blossom trees that you see in Washington, D.C. were introduced by him. These beauties came from Japan.
Author Daniel Stone is a wonderful writer. (He has done many articles for National Geographic and Scientific American.) He keeps your interest from the beginning to the end and it's just a delight to read. If you like finding out about food exploration and where it originally came from, don't hesitate. The book is really terrific.
Very highly recommended.