AHC: Cabbage a staple food

[Vingilótë]

How would it be possible to make cabbage a staple food of a diet somewhere, perhaps up to the modern day?

 

[LSCatilina]

What do you mean? Cabbages were part of most staple food until industrialized agriculture appeared.

 

[Vingilótë]

Oh, whoops, was not aware.

Let's say, staple food into the modern era.

ETA: In much of the modern world. Because I just thought of a number modern diets where cabbage is a major staple.

 

[LSCatilina]

Then, delayed or limited industrialized agriculture, or a wheat disease could work, but not that importantly critically pre-contemporary times.
See, it's not because a vegetable is used as part of a basic alimentation that it's alone in it. Safe some exception (mostly due to farming regional specialization), different cultures were made in a same region.

 

[Vingilótë]

Ah, ok then! Thanks!

 

[The Ubbergeek]

How would it be possible to make cabbage a staple food of a diet somewhere, perhaps up to the modern day?

Hey, romans REALLY digged cultivating the Brassica varieties they knew... Asterix made jokes on it. And the chineses (and sinosphere) use it a lot too, varieties as Bok Choys...

 

[Ganesha]

I think of cabbage as a staple of several Indian cuisines I know (not Bengali, but others). Western cooking also relies on it heavily in some regions. What exactly do you mean by staple?

Cheers,
Ganesha

 

[LSCatilina]

What exactly do you mean by staple?

Staple food usually means a food whom use is generalized in a given diet. (Potatoes for Native Americans, by exemple)

 

[Fenrisúlfr]

I buy a cabbage every week. Its the main stay of a lot of my meals.

Its fantastic for bulking up stir fries etc.

 

[Julius Caesar]

Hey, romans REALLY digged cultivating the Brassica varieties they knew... Asterix made jokes on it. And the chineses (and sinosphere) use it a lot too, varieties as Bok Choys...

Oh Stuff Your Brassica Oleracea Capitata!

~Julius Caesar.

Cabbage is often eaten in Indian, especially South Indian, cuisines.

 

[bm79]

A "staple" crop is one from which one gains a large proportion of one's caloric needs, and as such cabbage could never provide the nutritional value to replace grains, pulses, or root crops. A cuisine based on cabbage would make you malnourished and constipated, but at least you could levitate on the force of the gas you'd pass all day long

 

[Sharunaku]

A "staple" crop is one from which one gains a large proportion of one's caloric needs, and as such cabbage could never provide the nutritional value to replace grains, pulses, or root crops. A cuisine based on cabbage would make you malnourished and constipated, but at least you could levitate on the force of the gas you'd pass all day long

I agree on malnourishment, but since when did fibers cause constipation and fart? Isn't it the opposite?

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I agree on malnourishment, but since when did fibers cause constipation and fart? Isn't it the opposite?

It's the complex sugars and maybe some sulfur compounds brassica varieties tend to have, from what I heard... The sugars feed the guts bacterias, and well...

It's why beans, musical fruits.

 

[Blurgle]

A "staple" crop is one from which one gains a large proportion of one's caloric needs, and as such cabbage could never provide the nutritional value to replace grains, pulses, or root crops. A cuisine based on cabbage would make you malnourished and constipated, but at least you could levitate on the force of the gas you'd pass all day long

I was going to say something similar: staple crops tend to be grains (millet, wheat, rice) or starches (taro, potato, breadfruit). It's impossible for a leafy green like cabbage to be a true staple.

As an important food source, on the other hand...cabbage still is that in many, many cultures.