Dietary fiber or roughage is the indigestible portion of food derived from plants. It has two main components: 1  Soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, is readily fermented in the colon into gases and physiologically active byproducts, and can be prebiotic and viscous.ietary fiber or roughage is the indigestible portion of food derived from plants. It has two main components: 1  Soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, is readily fermented in the colon into gases and physiologically active byproducts, and can be prebiotic and viscous.
The Portuguese were the first to engage in the New World slave trade in the 16th century. Between 1418 and the 1470s, the Portuguese launched a series of exploratory expeditions that remapped the oceans south of Portugal, charting new territories that one explorer described as oceans where none have ever sailed before.
There was nothing especially new about slavery as a system of labor and the exploitation of people when the Spanish and the Portuguese first began bringing slaves in 1503 from Western Africa to replace Native Americans in the gold mines of the Caribbean and Central America.t the time of the American Revolution, slavery was a profitable but not all-pervasive institution in the British colonies of North America. Most prosperous in the low-country areas, it was beginning to reach a point of diminishing returns in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland.