An Antioxidant Capacity Assay and its Application in Food Samples. Development, Validation and Application of a Biological Antioxidant Capacity Assay Using sodA::gfp as a Living Sensor

So far, I have discussed geography's biogeographic role, in providing the local wild animal and plant species suitable for domestication. But there is another major role of geography that deserves mention. Each civilization has depended not only on its own food plants domesticated locally, but also on other food plants that arrived after having been first domesticated elsewhere. The predominantly north/south axis of the New World made such diffusion of food plants difficult; the predominantly east/west axis of the Old World made it easy (see map overleaf). Today, we take plant diffusion so much for granted that we seldom stop to think where our foods originated. A typical American or European meal might consist of chicken (of Southeast Asian origin) with corn (from Mexico) or potatoes (from the southern Andes), seasoned with pepper (from India), accompanied by a piece of bread (from Near Eastern wheat) and butter (from Near Eastern cattle), and washed down by a cup of coffee (from Ethiopia). But this diffusion of valued plants and animals did not begin just in modern times: it has been happening for thousands of years ...»