Cuthand: This Thanksgiving, appreciate many foods' Indigenous origin

The Indigenous people developed a range of vegetables and plant products using evolutionary methods long before others around the world.

Henry the Eighth was a prodigious glutton who feasted on pheasants, swans and boar’s head with abandon and washed them down with vast quantities of wine and ale.

Vegetables were a small part of his diet since they were regarded as food for the poor. He died at age 58, obese and gout-ridden, but such was the life of a medieval despot.

Meanwhile, the Spanish were busy plundering the Americas and conquering the Indigenous nations with a mixture of disease and genocide. In their singular search for gold, they ignored the large array of plants and vegetables that the Indigenous people had cultivated and grown for centuries.