Over the centuries, and especially in the last couple of decades, humans have changed the way fruits and veggies look and taste like through things like selective breeding and cultivating. You might be surprised at how much fruits and veggies have changed over the years! Keep reading to see some of the biggest changes.
Corn
Corn originally comes from a Mexican grass called teosinte. As you can see, the kernels in the grass are small and hard to get to. Through the years, we cultivated the bigger and better plants that had larger and more rows of kernels. Over time, this led to the corn we have today – which is much easier to peel and significantly larger.
Avocado
Wild avocados are rather small – about 3-4 inches in diameter. They could easily fit in the palm of your hand. Plus, in wild avocados, the pit is so large, there is hardly any edible “meat” of the fruit. In fact, you’d need about 10 wild avocados to get the same amount of meat. Wild avocados of old had a hard shell as opposed to the leather ones of the modern avocado.
Peaches
The first peaches were small with a gigantic stone in the middle. They were more the size of cherries rather than the baseball sized fruit we know today. The stone inside took up about 34% of the fruit, so the meat was hardly worth the trouble. The peaches we know today are 90% edible.
Eggplant
The original eggplant is virtually unrecognizable from the modern eggplant we know today. It came in a variety of shapes and colors – one of which was white and oval shaped, hence the name “eggplant.” Through selective breeding in China and India, we have the much bigger, more purple version of the plant today.
Strawberries
So far on this list, we’ve seen how farmers have cultivated fruits and veggies to make them bigger and tastier, but the opposite is true of strawberries. Well, at least as far as taste is concerned. The modern strawberry is clearly bigger than the wild strawberry of old, but the wild strawberry is much more flavorful and sweet.
