In addition, the savory, meaty taste of the tomato added some pizzazz to the average Italians diet, which formally was made up of a lot grain and beans.

But I was just curious.

I live in California, where we seem to eat a lot of sandwiches, salads, and Mexican food.

Polenta was eaten at lunch, at dinner and at breakfast, often soaked in milk (house cows were extremely common). Italian cooking, as in Italians cooking in Italy, uses fairly little tomato. Most likely the first variety to reach Europe was yellow in color, since in Spain and Italy they were known as pomi d'oro, meaning yellow apples. Italy and Italians didn't exist until late 1800s, for this reason you're wrong if you're assuming that ''Italians'' eat the same things and influenced each other. Why do Italians eat tomatoes? Since the introduction of fast foods, takeaways and frozen and tinned foods, Italians tend to eat less home-made food but fresh food is still quite common and most people buy bread, milk and other foods daily. For example, in the north (Lombardy and the alpine region), it's beef, milk and dairy products, game, and mushrooms - the region's traditionally famous for its hunting grounds, forests, and pastures. Spaghetti and pizza and so many other tomato sauce based dishes are such signatures of Italian cuisine, you wonder what Italians were eating before … In 1519, Cortez discovered tomatoes growing in Montezuma's gardens and brought seeds back to Europe where they were planted as ornamental curiosities, but not eaten. So what did people eat till then? When I think about Italian food, something with tomatoes often comes to mind. Before the Columbian exchange, the staple grain was (at least in alpine regions) rye. At Ferraro Restaurant & Wine Bar, we’re passionate about every aspect of the Italian culinary tradition – so we’re here to turn back the clock and show what Italians ate Join the discussion today. discussion from the Chowhound General Discussion, Italian food community. Every day you have a finite number of meals, and a finite amount of space in your stomach, whereas there seem to be an infinite number of Italian dishes that you “absolutely need to try”. We still see this in northern Italy, and eat it in alfredo sauce with pasta popularly. And cheese, lots of cheese, even if no one brought tomatoes to Italy, there would have been flat-bread smeared with olive oil and sprinkled with cheese. The Etruscans built the first true towns in Italy centered around what is now Tuscany. At first I thought it was pizza but I was wrong there as well. Flatbreads topped with spreads or cheeses and topped with vegetables or meat date back thousands of years, and satiated many hungry Italians before the invention of the Margherita pizza in the 18th or 19th century. Italian cuisine is food typical of Italy.It has developed through centuries of social and economic changes, with roots stretching to antiquity.. Significant changes occurred with the colonization of the Americas and the introduction of potatoes, tomatoes, capsicums, maize and sugar beet, this last introduced in quantity in the 18th century. I heard once one Italian high nobleman arrived late in the night to an inn and asked an owner of the inn to give some food to eat. Pizza as well, or at least its distant cousin also existed before the introduction of the tomato. Read the What were the Italians eating before tomatoes were imported? Before tomato sauce and pasta were popular, Northern Italian diet relied heavily on polenta as a staple (sometimes in poorer regions with unpleasant effects such as pellagra). Italy is a European country rich in history with diverse cultures and languages. It took Italians an age to embrace the tomato, but the rest is juicy history, says Robert Appelbaum It has always bothered me that Italians call the tomato a "pomodoro", a golden apple, and have done so since the early 16th century. Additional Note: The tomato was not eaten in Europe in the middle ages. History of the Tomato in Italy and China. It was considered a poisonous plant for centuries, and indeed it ts related to nightshade. They were unknown in to the rest of the world until explorers brought them back from the New World in the early 1500’s. ... Italians eat a lot of pizza and croissants like french people. Many adults still make their own food (e.g., tomato sauce from their own tomatoes) and takeaways are not very frequent. I'm wondering, what was their cuisine like before the Tomato was brought back from the new world? Traditional dishes are focused on what is available locally. And my favorite cuisine to cook is Italian. Tomatoes aren’t native to Europe. This article will explore the typical Italian diet and discover exactly what do Italians eat in a typical day.