Hello and welcome back to the Most Amazing Channel on the Internet!
I am your host Rebecca Felgate and today I am talking about my very favourite thing …food!
Food as we know it now didn’t always look the way it does today.
In fact, a lot of foods have undergone huge transformations ….today I am talking about
the top 10 foods that originally looked different.
Let’s start off with the humble Banana at number 10 shall we….you may be shocked to
know how they used to look before we selectively bred them into what they are today.
7,000 years ago, bananas looked a lot like this.
See those big, hard seeds?
What are they about!
Our modern bananas came from two varieties, the Musa Acuminata and the Musa Balbisiana,
both of which had big seeds in the middle.
Now, selective breeding means we don’t need to put up with that madness.
Also, little side fact for you….
Bananas also looked pretty different in the 1950s.
This painting of a watermelon in the 1600s has weirded me out….
Like what is this alien!
Check it out at number 9 17th Century artist Giovanni Stanchi painted
this oil on canvas watermelon and I am shook.
It clearly shows that back in the day we got less bang for our buck when it came to the
delicious red part of the fruit.
These days, watermelons look like this…..which is pretty different!
In the future, they’ll probably look like this….
We are now able to genetically modify melons so that they are seedless.
Oh, next up, we have a story of modern heartbreak.
This is a picture of a Toblerone in better times, the sun is shining, a lad is breaking
off a chunk to share with his mates.
This is how I will remember Toblerone.
Sadly….this is how the delicious chocolate and nougat bar looks today…..
A lot of people are understandably sad and confused.
It sparked a lot of Brexit related memes, too.
7 - Carrots
Carrots that we enjoy today are a far cry from wild, historical carrots.
A quick browse of the Carrot Museum website…yes…there is such a thing… will tell you that carrots
go way back to the 10th century in Asia.
Apparently they used to be purple or white and thin with a forked end, rather than the
one point we know today.
These days we can genetically modify a purple carrot, but it seems the natural one died
out in favour of those with the orange pigment.
6 – Peach Did you know that peaches used to be the size
of cherries?
No, neither did I until today!
Apparently in 4000 BC, peaches were 64 percent edible flesh and 36 percent stone.
They had a waxy skin and tasted earth and slightly salty!
These days they’re 4 times bigger, have a soft skin and are just 10% stone.
They’ve changed colour too!
Ye olde peaches were redder!
5 - McDonalds Okay, you can’t reaaaallly see the food
here, but look at the way Mcdonalds packaging has changed over the years!
I love looking at this kind of stuff!
It is so vibrant and iconic these days, and way back when it was kind of all vintage and
retro looking….I guess because it was!
Look how square that fillet is in the fillet o fish there!
Speaking of retro looking, check out this original crème egg at number 4
This egg is over 50 years old!
Crème eggs were launched by Fry’s in 1963 and were rebranded in 1971 when Cadbury’s
took over the company.
This only surviving original example of a crème egg looks so different!
It was part of an exhibition that took place in Bristol in the UK in 2013.
3 - Aubergine / Egg Plant I say aubergine, you say eggplant…why you
say eggplant…
I literally have no idea but allegedly you do.
Original egg plants were small, round and yellow and had spines that connected them
to the flower.
Centuries of selective breeding have given us the long blackish purplish chap we know
today.
In Thailand, they do still have something akin to what the ye olde egg olant used to
look like, but of course…
most of us in the west are pretty shocked that it can look anything like something that
isn’t long and chunky!
2 – Corn Corn used to be sooooo wee!
We basically invented corn as we know it today by crossing a much smaller corn like thing
called Teosinte with Maize.
Corn was domesticated in South American 10,000 years ago and back then people struggled to
get the vegetable out of its skin and it was much much smaller.
These days, corn is easily pealable and much bigger!
1 - Marshmallows This shocked me to my core.
Let’s get the then and now up straight away without any ado!
That there looks to me like a flower….and that there looks like a Marshmallow!
What on earth happened!
Well, I’ll tell you.
Basically, the marshmallow flower produces a sweet syrup that the Egyptians used to enjoy.
The French then used this to develop marshmallows as we know today, but after a while, the found
gelatin and sugar did a better job.
WELL.
What an evolution.