Globalization and Food We often hear about the world's "changing diet, and we think of this as a modern concept, but in a sense, the human diet has always been changing. The banana, for example, whose origins appear to be in the region that today is Malaysia, traveled to India, where Alexander the Great first tasted it; his soldiers brought it back to Greece in about 350 b.c. The potato had been grown in South America for thousands years before the Spanish brought it back to Europe in 1570. Increasing travel and trade, in turn, took both the banana and the potato to all corners of the world. It true, however, that globalization is is before. changing our diet faster than ever before.