Have you ever wondered what the origins are of the common foods we eat today?
Most of the foods found in the grocery store at one point were much smaller, bitter, sour
or unpalatable.
Let's get into this first off at number 10 we have corn.
10.
Corn
Tasty, sweet, pump corn fresh off the cob wasn’t always like this.
Going back 9000 years ago, corn was an easy crop to grow and peel but didn’t offer up
all that much.
The wild teosinte or wild corn was made up of only 1.6% sugar as compared to today’s
corn is 6.6%.
Not only sweeter today’s corn is 1000 times larger.
This all changed in the 15th century when European settlers started the cultivation
of corn.
You can see through time how corn started from a single strand of kernels to a longer
cluster of corn kernels to the full cob of corn we have today.
From here corn has been grown all over the world with numerous different varieties of
different shapes and colors like you can see here.
I currently have 16 different types of rare, unusual corn varieties you’ll have to subscribe
to see in upcoming videos as they become ripe.
Out of all the different varieties of corn this one here the striped japonica is the
only one with a different type of husk.
9.
Pineapple
Grow in vast quantity in Hawaii and Costa Rica the world’s favorite tropical fruit,
the pineapple, has humble beginnings.
With its origins not definitively known, the pineapple is thought to have come from paraguay
or southern Brazil.
The Bromelia pinguin the original plant is a 4 foot or 1.2 meter tall bromelia that yields
small yellow fruit that tastes like a very acidic pineapple.
This fruit is so acidic it is recommended to not eat it raw but rather cook it.
For those that do consume it raw it is advised to dilute it with water or another fruit like
banana blended to be able to palet it’s acidity.
The acidity is so strong it’ll cause mouth, lip and throat burn which only happens with
a common pineapple if it is consumed when the outer skin is green and unripe.
Along with the round orbs of fruit the wild pineapple flowers and young leaves can be
cooked and eaten as well.
These flowers can produce 10 to 75 round fruits per harvest as compared to a common pineapple
which ends up fusing together all of these to create 1 large fruit.
While the common pineapple “tropical gold” was the final result of cultivation of the
Bromelia pinguin other different varieties were also created like a red wild pineapple,
Ananas bracteatus.
Still very acidic it wasn’t until recently that this pineapple was cultivated to be edible
and delicious with edible skin.
I could talk pineapple all day so I think I’ll save the numerous amazing varieties
for another video.
8.
Carrot
The carrot wasn’t always a sweet and tasty treat.
Originating from the Daucus carota or Queen Anne’s Lace this small bush produces one
gnarly fibrous carrot.
Crushing both the stem and leaves will emit a strong carrot odor yet these carrot tops
are not edible like the common carrot of today.
The wild carrot is much more pale and yellowish in color and devoid of any taste you’d really
want to put in your mouth, I know because I tried it.
The only way to eat the wild carrot is to boil it for many…
MANY hours until it is finally soft.
They should only be consumed when young as the woody texture that develops is due to
high content of xylem tissue.
Named after Queen Anne of England an expert lace maker the wild carrot is thought to have
originated on the Iranian Plateau a region that includes Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
Cultivated in central Asia 1100 years ago.
It has taken countless seasons in the garden to cultivate the delicious carrot we know
today not to mention the many unusual varieties like two I have growing here which will be
featured in my Top 10 Foods series.
7.
Peach
The
peach we all love it but it’s origin isn’t completely known.
The common fuzzy peach’s name (Prunus persica) suggest they come from Persia or Iran but
recent studies show they originated from China.
The common peach does a have history of growing there since 4000 BCE where they were small
like the size of a cherry.
Having waxy skin, 64% edible flesh and the remaining 36% being the stone the wild peach
had an earthy, sweet and sour taste with a salty twist like a lentil.
The common peach is 64 times larger has soft fuzzy skin with 90% edible flesh and only
10% of it being the stone.
If we take this a step further it looks as if the wild peach of China could have originated
from Australia, more specifically the quandong.
The quandong or wild peach as it’s called is most definitely older than the wild peach
of China.
Going back 40 million years, fossilised quandongs have been found in coal seams of Southern
Victoria Australia, which shows clearly that quandong came first but with the lackluster
time machines we have today we likely won’t truly know.
The quandong grows on a shrub up to 20 feet or 6 meters vs the common peach grows on a
tree up 25 feet or 7.5 meters.
While they differ shrub to tree their heights are very similar where they are completely
different is their macronutrient breakdown.
The quandong is made up of more than 50% fat which is incredibly unique for a fruit with
the remaining going to carbohydrate and protein where the common peach is 87% carbs, 8% protein
and only 5% fat.
The common peach enjoys the hot summer heat but a cool period to enact a chemical reaction
to make it thrive where the quandong is found in central and southern deserts of Australia
where it is scorching hot and relies on being a hemiparasitic plant or one that uses the
root system of other to pull the nutrition it needs.
6.
Raspberry First mentioned in a herbal medicine english
book published in 1548 the raspberry is indigenous to Asia and North America.
It is believed that the people of Troy gathered wild raspberries from the foothills of Mount
Ida in Turkey.
In medieval Europe the wild raspberry was used for food but also medicinally, in paintings
and illuminated manuscripts.
This berry was only for royalty of the time but by the 18th century cultivation spread
this berry across Europe.
In 1761 George Washington moved his estate to Mount Vernon where raspberry cultivation
began in his garden.
A hundred years later by 1867 there were 40 different varieties.
Along with the increase in size as you can see these wild raspberries are quite small,
taste was also improved.
The wild raspberry has a sour taste which I personally enjoy but is on the opposite
spectrum to the sweet raspberries found in grocery stores today.
The most common raspberry varieties are Nova, Taylor, Latham, Boyne and Autumn Bliss.
Everbearing varieties like this one here which I’m not sure what type it is will produce
3 harvests a year all the way into December.
5.
Strawberry Mentioned in ancient roman literature the
wild strawberry has only used medicinally as they were small, tough and lacking flavour.
From the 1300s to the end of the 1500s the Fragaria vesca and Fragaria moschata the 2
varieties of strawberries in Europe started to make their way out of the wilderness and
into the gardens.
Charles the 5th was one of the first King’s of France to demand strawberries be in the
royal garden.
In the 1600’s the Virginia strawberry, Fragaria virginiana was brought to Europe but was unappreciated
by most.
English gardeners got to work creating thirty new varieties from these 3 original varieties
of strawberries.
The moment the strawberry went from tiny wild strawberries like we see here to the huge
delicious ones we all know and love today is when a French spy brought back a Chilean
strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis.
This native strawberry to Chile lacked production of berries per plant but produced large fruit.
They are only able to grow in mild coastal climates making them not ideal for many places
around the world.
The Virginia strawberry and the Chilian strawberry were then crossed to create the Fragaria ananassa
the common strawberry we eat today.
Americans Charles Hovey and James Wilson developed their own varieties that would grow in any
type of soil which increased strawberry production 50 times to a hundred thousand acres.
4.
Wild Plum - Plum Found within archaeological sites dating back
to neolithic times the plum may have been one of the first fruits domesticated by humans.
The 3 most abundant cultivars are only found near human settlements.
Prunus domestica has been traced back to Eastern Europe, Prunus salicina and Prunus simonii
from Asia.
The Caspian Sea and China are more specifically where they first grew, dating back at least
2000 years.
Prunus domestica made its way to Europe somehow, some think it was carried to Rome around 200
B.C. where others say the Duke of Anjou took some home as he returned from Jerusalem at
the close of the 5th crusade.
They eventually made their way to New York in 1737 and Quebec around 1771.
Prunus salicina or the Japanese plum made its way from China over to Korea and Japan
were it became popular.
Prunus simonii or the apricot plum features dark red flesh that clings to the seed much
like an apricot and offers a bitter taste to it most of the time.
In perfect conditions they do taste good but not normally but they always smell good.
Luther Burbank an American botanist responsible for developing more than 800 strains and varieties
of plants used both the Japanese plum and apricot plum to create new wonderfully smelling
and tasting plums such as Climax, Maynard, Chalco, Santa Rosa and Formosa.
3.
Wild Avocado - Avocado South central Mexico was the birthplace of
the avocado between 7000 and 5000 B.C. but it would be many millennia before they would
be cultivated by humans.
Domesticated avocado seeds were found buried with Inca mummies dating back to 750 B.C.
and evidence has been found of avocado cultivation in Mexico around 500 B.C.
The original avocados as you can see were not exactly the most abundant fruit.
Consisting of mostly seed these avocados wouldn’t exactly add that thick layer of avo to your
toast.
The original name of this fruit… vegetable whatever you consider an avocado is aguacate
but because the Spanish conquistadores couldn’t pronounce it they changed the english name
to avocado.
The first english language mention of the avocado was by Sir Henry Sloane in 1696 to
which he also called it the alligator pear tree.
2.
Pumpkin
Dating back 8000 - 10000 years as far as we know, the pumpkin or wild pumpkin came from
the Oaxaca Highlands of Mexico.
Carbon dating done on seeds found in the Guilá Naquitz Cave gives us the origin of the pumpkin
has far back as possible along with much younger bean and maize samples being 2000 to 5000
years old.
The wild pumpkin or cucurbita pepo is comprised of two molecularly divergent groups that on
their own had already differentiated through geographical isolation many years before humans
domesticated them.
Cucurbita pepo naturally split into cucurbita pepo ssp.
Pepo and cucurbita pepo ssp.
Ovifera.
The pepo family includes pumpkin, zucchini and other marrow squashes, where the ovifera
family includes acorn, crookneck and scallop squash and most ornamental gourds.
The greek word pepon or large melon was changed by the French into pompon which was changed
by the English into Pumpion which was changed by American colonists into pumpkin.
1.
Jackfruit My personal favorite fruit the jackfruit didn’t
start off as the heaviest fruit on earth.
Cultivated varieties today can weigh in over 100 lbs or 45 kg but it wasn’t always this
way.
The artocarpus hirsutus, jungle jack or wild jackfruit was the true origin of this fruit.
At full size they are only as big as a softball which shows you how far the jackfruit has
really come.
Originating in the rain forests of Western Ghats of India this fruit spread across southeast
asia and the Philippines.
In 1782 plants from a captured French ship on their way to Martinique were taken to Jamaica
where it is now a common fruit to be found.
From here the jackfruit made its way up to Florida and Hawaii but still isn’t all that
common on the Hawaiian Islands.
I should note here too on the northern part of Oahu just outside of Turtle Bay Resort
is a roadside market that sells a variety called ice cream jackfruit which is still
to this day my favorite bite of a fruit I’ve ever consumed.
This was 8 years ago so lets hope they are still growing this jackfruit there.
If you enjoyed this video you’ll like the previous episode on the poisonous potato fruit
so check it out and until the next one have a good one.