It shocked me when I learned a couple of years ago that common vegetables like potatoes actually originated in the Americas. I always thought of them as Europea

It shocked me when I learned a couple of years ago that common vegetables like potatoes actually originated in the Americas. I always thought of them as European foods because of their popularity there and stuff like the Irish potatoe famine. I do remember learning in elementary school how the natives would plant plants in groups (tall corn shading shorter plants like squash and beans that don't need as much sunlight and to keep away weeds, etc.). But somehow I never connected that these were fundamentally American foods.