Agriculture is the foundation of all human civilization. The moment mankind was able to reliably grow its own food, it could halt its nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. When we were no longer forced to chase migrating herds and pluck grubs from the dirt to survive, we were able to develop culture, language, and music. Below are 10 strange and fascinating facts about these foods we hold so dear.

10 Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed was a real person, but so much mystique surrounds his name that, like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, he’s passed into the realm of legend. He roamed the frontier territory of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in the late 1700s and early 1800s, planting 100,000 square miles of apple orchards as he went, some of which remain today. Barefoot and dressed in sackcloth, people were vastly entertained by his presence. He made fast friends with Native Americans, children, and animals alike.

That said, the man wasn’t a saint, and growing apples was big business. He seemed to have an uncanny knack for knowing where the next settlement was going to spring up and arrived ahead of time. When the pioneers came along, he would sell his trees for a few cents apiece and move on. Because of this, he died a wealthy man.

Lest you imagine that Johnny’s apples went into pies and cobblers, it might interest you to know that apples weren’t highly valued as food back then. Johnny’s orchards were planted for making hard cider and applejack. After all, there was no sense conquering the frontier if you couldn’t settle down with a cocktail at suppertime.

9 Negative-Calorie Celery

There is no pursuit fraught with more anecdotal, questionable, and downright dangerous advice than dieting. One of the most dubious claims is that there are “negative calorie” foods—so low in calories that the very act of chewing and digesting them consumes more energy than the food actually gives us. The most commonly cited example is celery, which contains about six calories per stalk. Dozens of otherwise reliable sources assert that celery will actually help you lose weight.

However, the act of digestion is remarkably efficient and burns few calories. It makes sense as a survival mechanism; in the age before drive-thrus and Wal-Marts, humans often had to expend enormous amounts of energy to obtain food. If digesting what they managed to scrounge up was also an energy-consuming process, they would likely starve to death. Celery is no replacement for exercise, but feel free to eat it to your heart’s content. It would take over 300 sticks to equal the average human’s daily ration of calories.

8 Banana Extinction

Our great-grandparents might have dealt with the Great Depression, and they certainly didn’t have iPads to while away their hours, but they did have something we don’t—far superior bananas. Prior to the 1950s, the most widely distributed banana in the world was the “Gros Michel.” Unfortunately, the Gros Michel banana was nearly wiped out by a fungus called Panama Disease.

Today, we enjoy a similar version of the banana called the Cavendish. The Cavendish is smaller, more fragile, and less tasty than the Gros Michel, but it has a resistance to the Panama Disease. But like the Gros Michel before it, the Cavendish is in big trouble. There’s a new strain of Panama Disease on the rise, and most scientists believe that it is only a matter of time before the Cavendish, which is susceptible to this version, will also disappear (functionally, that is—there are still Gros Michels around, just not enough to meet global demand).

7 Toxic Potatoes

The common potato is a member of the Solanum genus and a kissing cousin of deadly nightshade. Like nightshade, the potato produces large amounts of substances called glycoalkaloids, particularly one nasty strain called solanine. This poison is the potato’s defense mechanism that keep it from getting eaten, and is most concentrated in the leaves, stems, and shoots. Spotting any green on the skin of the potato is a sure indication of the presence of solanine. Most commercially available potatoes are carefully cultivated for low levels of the poison, but it is possible to get one with a high amount present, and people have died from ingesting potato solanine. While cooking can reduce the level, every potato you eat gives you at least some small amount of exposure.

6 Grape Plasma

A simple grape can be turned from a solid to a gas to a plasma with a little ride in the microwave. There are sometimes inherent dangers involved in catastrophically changing states of matter, and the microwave might not survive this stunt. There is also a chance, however remote, that you might set your house on fire, so don’t try this one at home.

The set up is simple. Take a grape, and slice it about 90 percent of the way through, leaving both halves attached by a small strip of skin. Remove the rotating tray from the microwave, insert grape, and set it for no more than ten seconds. After a couple seconds, the moisture inside the grape emerges as a gas, and the charge between the two halves turns the steam into a brief electric lightshow. Placing a clear glass over the top of the grape will contain the plasma a few moments longer.

5 Cannibal Tomato

Fiji’s “cannibal tomato” is actually an eggplant. The plant closely resembles a tomato and was used by the natives of Fiji, who have practiced cannibalism for thousands of years, to create a sauce said to be the perfect compliment to eating human flesh. As I mentioned in a previous list, some modern-day folks who have tasted human meat have likened its flavor and consistency to that of veal, so it would seem appropriate to pair it with a nice marinara.

4 Designer Melons

The watermelon originated in southern Africa, and its spread throughout the world highlights the existence of sophisticated trade routes in ancient times. It was consumed by Egyptians during the time of the pharaohs. It reached China by the 10th century and Europe in the 13th century.

Highly adaptable, the watermelon was a natural target for the Japanese appetite for novelty. Farmers discovered a way of raising the melons inside glass boxes so that they grow in a cube shape for easy storage in refrigerators. Other shapes—including pyramids—have also been formed. Even more outlandish are the prices paid for gourmet “Densuke” watermelons. Grown only on Hokkaido Island, the first few specimens harvested each year sell for thousands of dollars. The average Densuke melon retails for about $250.

3 Purple Carrots

Like the watermelon, the carrot’s migration around the world can be traced, though there are some doubts regarding its origin. It is believed to have been first cultivated in modern-day Afghanistan, then swept into Europe along Middle Eastern trade routes. Of course, we would hardly recognize these ancient carrots—they were rather straggly and either white or purple. Beneath the green thumb of the Dutch, the carrot was bred into its current orange state. While most of us have never seen anything but orange carrots, other colors are available in high-end grocery and health food stores, often in “rainbow packs,” including white, yellow, red, purple, and even black varieties.

2 Spinach, The Iron Vegetable

Spinach has a bad rap. Many people, particularly children, turn up their nose at the vegetable. Enter Elzie Segar, whose Popeye character derived superhuman strength from a can of spinach. There is no telling just how profound an impact Popeye has had on the worldwide consumption of spinach, but there have been statues erected of him in growing communities. Canner Allens Vegetables even markets a Popeye brand.

The story goes that spinach was chosen by Segar based on a faulty study from the 1800s that misplaced a decimal point in estimating the iron content of the vegetable. The story has since been proven a myth, with newer claims pointing to the vitamin A content as the reason Segar chose spinach. Spinach is rather healthy, but many people choose to boil it—which tends to remove many of the nutrients.

1The World’s Most Hated Vegetable

Unfortunately for our expanding waistlines, vegetables are often the most reviled of foods. President George H.W. Bush so hated broccoli that he made headlines when he banned it from the White House. Surveys in the UK have shown celery to be their least favorite green. But the world over, one vegetable continually tops the lists of “most hated”: brussels sprouts.

These tiny cabbages might be extremely healthy, with over a dozen vitamins and minerals, but their bitter flavor turns off most palates. In fairness to the sprouts, certain cooking methods can improve their taste. For best results, aficionados claim that smaller sprouts taste sweeter. Halving them, quickly boiling them, and then immersing them in cold water takes away some of the bitterness, and it helps to temper them with an acid like lemon or red vinegar.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.

Fruits are wonders of sweetness and seed that we have grown over millennia to feed ourselves. We tend to think that the various fruits we enjoy have been only slightly altered on the orchards of domestication. The truth is that there are more interesting histories of fruit than you can chew.

10 The Kiwifruit’s Nationality

Kiwifruit, shortened as kiwi, was named after the bird of the same name due to its fuzzy brown resemblance. The curiously shaped avians are endemic to New Zealand, and you’d expect the fruits to be, too. After all, they produced over a billion dollars for the country in 2015.

However, kiwifruit actually originated in China under a name that translates to “macaque peach” due to its popularity with the local monkeys. Later on, the English named it the Chinese gooseberry for reasons completely unknown.

At the turn of the 20th century, the principal of a New Zealand college had brought back some seeds from China. After a few decades, New Zealand began exporting Chinese gooseberries to the US. But it soon became apparent that nothing associated with Red China was profitable during the Cold War.

First, New Zealand changed the name to “melonettes,” but that also failed since unattractive tariffs were placed on melons and berries. Finally, in a hilarious marketing move, the goose was reasonably replaced with New Zealand’s national bird and the berry broadened into fruit.^[1]

9 The Pineapple’s Adoration

For centuries, everyone involved in the pineapple’s colonial trade absolutely adored it. The earliest records involve Carib Indians, expert navigators who traded and raided across the islands to collect all manner of bounty.

The intense sweetness of the pineapple elevated it as a staple in important feasts and cultural rites. During Columbus’s second voyage to the Caribbean, his crew hauntingly found pineapples beside pots of body parts, evidence of cannibalism at their first inspection of an abandoned Carib village.

When it was brought back to Europe, the pineapple was regarded as nature’s culinary masterpiece, a tropical delight reserved for English royalty and literally held on a pedestal during extravagant feasts because there were no common sweets back then.

The women of colonial America competed with each other in arranging creative displays of food on their tabletops, with the sharp pineapple being king of the decorations and undeniable proof of wealth. Due to its extreme rarity, producers actually rented the fruit for hostesses to proudly exhibit. Then the pineapples were given back to be sold as food.^[2]

8 The Tomato’s Toxicity

By now, it is common knowledge that the tomato has a tainted past. Being a member of the notoriously poisonous nightshade family, the bright red tomato was thought by wary Europeans to be toxic for over two centuries.

But this was no simple assumption on appearance. Affluent Europeans did die of poisoning after eating tomatoes on their pewter plates. The acidity from the fruit released lead, a component metal of pewter alloy at the time, producing a deadly combination of tableware and tomato.

Furthermore, 10-centimeter (4 in) tomato hornworm caterpillars were thought to poison the tomatoes they infested. Though we now know they are harmless, the caterpillars had a menacing red protrusion on their tails.

Established American colonists had no issue with the enjoyable tomato, but newer rural settlers still avoided it due to the lack of cross-country information sharing. Interestingly, the Civil War brought tomatoes into the spotlight in America.

As a fast-growing, easily canned food, tomatoes dominated the canning market to support soldiers on both sides. In 1880, Italian peasants popularized tomatoes in Europe as an edible ingredient in the birth of pizza, finally eliminating all fear of the fruit.^[3]

7 The Avocado’s Salvation

Before agriculture, avocado seeds enjoyed widespread travel in the bodies of various megafauna before being defecated in fertile feces. Birds and other small animals did not provide any benefit in helping plant the large seed and so were all lethally deterred from eating avocados through development of the toxin persin.

After the Ice Age extinction event, three-fourths of all megafauna were wiped out. With the avocado’s distributors all gone, it required a savior from extinction: us.^[4]

Central Americans successfully cultivated avocados during and after the time of the megafauna and named the fruit after its similar appearance to testicles, evoking a sexual mysticism. Indeed, the avocado was thought to be such a potent aphrodisiac that virgin daughters were kept indoors when Aztec farmers harvested avocados!

6 The Pumpkin’s Tradition

Our favorite squash, the pumpkin wasn’t always able to be carved into sturdy, smiling Halloween decorations. However, even Pilgrims praised the pumpkin’s long storage time and sweetly nutritious flesh in this verse circa 1633:

For pottage and puddings and custards and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undoon.

Europeans were incremental to the creation of the modern pumpkin. The earliest jack–o’–lanterns were made from lit coals placed in hollow root vegetables such as turnips and potatoes. The lanterns were held during festivals to brighten the night.

As Celtic tradition arrived in America, the pumpkin was grown through artificial selection to become the greatest carrier of fire and light. Decades later, the pumpkin was immortalized as the joyous fruit of the harvest—a massive, creative, and delicious entity of Halloween.^[5]

5 The Chili Pepper’s Ubiquity

Chilies are intensely spicy to prevent animals from eating their seeds, which aren’t suited for survival past digestion. In an evolutionary insult, humans raised and ate chili peppers specifically for their natural flame, producing varieties so intense that they blister skin and blind if exposed to the eye.

Latin Americans are stereotypically known to enjoy an apparent immunity to the blazing effects, a not entirely false notion given the cultural origin of the chili.^[6]

In the records of conquistadors, the Aztecs and Maya ate chilies with anything and everything. Chilies were believed to have medicinal properties to cure various sicknesses. The smoke was used as both a highly effective pest deterrent and a highly effective children’s punishment.

Chilies also achieved a legendary commonplace status. If not practicing abstinence from chilies for religious or health reasons, a person who didn’t eat chili peppers would straightaway be presumed a witch!

4 The Strawberry’s Union

Uniquely, ancestral strawberries originated in both Europe and North America. The French selected wild strawberries for sweetness, but the fruit was still small. Only the Sun King’s plans for royal domination romantically brought the parents of the modern strawberry together from across the continents.

King Louis XIV of France desired the Spanish throne, so he assigned a spy, Frezier, to study Chilean and Peruvian fortifications. But Frezier’s duty was not only to discover the military strength of the colonial Spanish.

Previously, another dispatch had found unexpectedly large Chilean strawberries. A military engineer posing as a merchant, Frezier purchased the strawberries and brought them back to France.

For years, French gardeners couldn’t reproduce the Chilean strawberry since they grew native strawberries through asexual planting. The Chilean variety had both male and female plants. But the males were culled as weeds due to their different appearance because the Europeans didn’t know any better.

None of the European strawberries were large enough to hybridize with the Chilean, but the Virginian variety, brought over during the French colonization of North America, was. While placed in the same garden, the two plants from the New World coincidentally came together in the Old World to create the globally distributed garden strawberry we savor today.^[7]

3 The Apple’s Alcohol

Apples have been eaten since before Jericho’s walls were built. They were revered in Western cultures as a mythical symbol and still are respected as a daily health remedy.

On the great American frontier, Johnny Appleseed planted plenty of apple trees for welcome settlers, but they didn’t munch on them. The notion of eating apples was actually rare since most varieties were bitter and unpleasant. Over time, apples were selected to become larger and tastier, but until then, their main purpose was to create another product.^[8]

Apple cider was championed as the most valuable, most available beverage of early America. Compared to the water and whiskey of the colonies, homegrown apple cider could be counted on as a personally confirmed sanitary and healthy drink.

Originally only made as hard cider, which was alcoholic, demand greatly fell during Prohibition. To continue to use their apple stock, producers rightly marketed apples as being directly edible after breeding sweet, nutritious varieties.

2 The Rhubarb’s Warning

The plight of China during the Opium Wars was tragic. Technologically superior militaries allowed Western nations to bully China and steal its wealth. The worst offense was the introduction of opium, which ruined many lives due to uncontrollable addiction and poverty.

After failing to prevent the blockade of Canton, a major trade province, Chinese officials were desperate to retaliate. It would have taken too long to modernize their military, so they looked to other solutions.

To regain respect in trade agreements for their country, officials researched the English to determine if an embargo of a few vital products would help. The studies of Lin Tse-Hsu, the Chinese commissioner in Canton, had exaggeratedly shown him that without rhubarb, tea, silk, and other goods, the people of foreign nations would be devastated.

In a famously ignored plea, Lin sent a letter to Queen Victoria stating that since opium was clearly understood as an illegal, destructive drug in the United Kingdom, it should not be immorally exploited in China.

He proposed that if China were to embargo its rhubarb, widely used as an effective laxative, entire populations of Westerners would start to die of constipation. Unfortunately, he did not realize that these goods were luxuries rather than requirements.

The misunderstanding was recorded in the letter for history to demonstrate the confusion and hope of the vulnerable East.^[9]

1 The Breadfruit’s Mutiny

Breadfruit was discovered by a scientific crew in Tahiti, an island located in the center of the South Pacific. Eighteenth-century Europeans had gathered to witness the transit of Venus, an extremely rare astronomical event which is similar in nature to a solar eclipse by the Moon.

With them was botanist Joseph Banks, who correctly and impressively identified the breadfruit as a cheap and nutritious fruit, albeit for the mistreated slaves of the sugar plantations. King George III directed Lieutenant William Bligh to gather this potentially valuable fruit.

Bligh’s crew on the HMS Bounty enjoyed the shores of Tahiti and eventually departed with 1,000 breadfruit plants. However, master’s mate Fletcher Christian led a revolt, discarding Bligh and his followers in an open boat.

Since both Bligh and Christian survived, the history on the reasons behind the mutiny is impossible to truly know. Bligh may have been abusive, Christian may have gone insane, or the crew may have simply wanted to return to the Tahitian women and beaches.

It is confirmed, though, that Bligh had been saving water for the fruit instead of his men. Though dutiful, this would definitely have raised issues.

As an excellent navigator, Bligh managed to safely sail thousands of miles to a hospitable Dutch island, returned to the UK as a hero, and went on to finish the job by bringing back 2,126 breadfruits on his second voyage. Unfortunately, his work was all in vain as the slaves absolutely refused to eat them due to their bland taste!^[10]

Damian Black is a lone archivist interested in the corruption of pure science.

Believe it or not, some of the popular fruits, nuts, and vegetables we eat today are man-made hybrids. They were created in laboratories through selective breeding, a process whereby only plants with favorable traits are replanted. That said, there have been rare instances where insects were responsible for creating the hybrid plants through cross-pollination.

SEE ALSO: 10 ‘Natural’ Things You Won’t Believe Are Actually Man-Made

Of course, these insects would never have been able to cross-pollinate the plants if humans hadn’t planted at least one of them in the area. Most of the entries on this list are surprising because the majority are fruits, nuts, and vegetables that we consider to be natural.

10 Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale, And More

Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and several closely related vegetables originated from the same plant species: Brassica oleracea. Its original form is known as wild mustard and still exists today.

About 2,500 years ago, wild mustard only grew in some parts of Europe and the Mediterranean; its taste varied greatly depending on where it grew. Ancient Romans and Greeks soon realized that they could plant it for food so they engaged in selective breeding by planting seeds from wild mustard with larger leaves. The result was the vegetables that we now call kale and collard greens.

Selective breeding continued in the 1600s when people bred wild mustard with bigger leaf buds. The result was a new vegetable covered with lots of leaves—this was the first cabbage. Wild mustard selected for its bigger stems became kohlrabi, the ones with small heads became brussels sprouts, and the ones with big flowers became broccoli and cauliflower.^[1]

The hybridization of wild mustard and its derivatives continued up to the 20th century. In 1928, Russian biologist Georgii Dmintrievich Karpechenko crossed a radish with a cabbage to produce what he called the rabbage. The rabbage should have been impossible because the radish is not related to the cabbage. However, the plant never caught on because it failed at being either a radish or a cabbage.

Later in 1993, the Sakata Seed Company of Yokohama, Japan crossbred broccoli with kai-lan to create broccolini, or as some call it, baby broccoli, asparation, asparations, broccoletti, broccolette, and Italian sprouting broccoli. It’s a derivative of wild mustard and is the Chinese version of broccoli.

9 Orange

Many varieties of the orange exist today. However, every variety traces its roots to the man-made hybrid when the pomelo was crossed with the mandarin. The pomelo is almost as bitter as the grapefruit, while the mandarin is sweet. The mandarin has an orange color, which is why many people misidentify it as a variety of the orange. Wrong! The mandarin is an ancestor of the orange.

The history of the orange is unclear, but it is believed to have first appeared in southern China. Over the years, humans have selectively bred oranges to create many varieties, making it easy to confuse the orange with other citrus fruits. To be clear, a fruit needs to have evolved from the pomelo and mandarin to be considered an orange.

That said, the tangerine is not considered an orange because it evolved from the mandarin but not the pomelo. However, the tangelo, which we’ll get to shortly, is in a gray area. It’s a cross between a tangerine and a pomelo. And as we mentioned already, the tangerine was created from the mandarin.^[2]

8 Peanut

The modern peanut is a hybrid of two earlier types of peanuts, the Arachis ipaensis and the Arachis duranensis. The Arachis duranensis grows in the Andean valleys between Bolivia and Argentina, while the Arachis ipaensis grows inside Bolivia.

Both plants were found so far away from each other, they couldn’t have crossbred naturally. Researchers ultimately discovered that the earliest settlers in South America took the Arachis duranensis from the Andean valleys as they migrated into today’s Bolivia 10,000 years ago.

However, the settlers did not quickly realize the potential of their new crop and it was the bees that actually cross-pollinated both peanuts. The result was a new peanut that is the ancestor of today’s peanuts.^[3]

7 Banana

The modern, common banana is a man-made hybrid of the wild Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana banana species. Musa acuminata has a fleshy inside, but it has a very unpleasant taste. Musa balbisiana has a pleasant-tasting inside but contains too many seeds.

Both bananas naturally crossbred in the forests of South Asia. However, the resultant banana, which is the ancestor of the modern banana, was sterile. About 10,000 years ago, early humans discovered the hybrid and learned that they could replant the shoots to create new trees. They engaged in selective breeding and only replanted bananas with favorable traits. This led to the creation of the modern banana.

Although we’ve managed to create the perfect banana, we could not figure out a way to grow bananas from seeds. So, bananas will become extinct if we stop planting them. The absence of a seed also means that all bananas have the same genetic properties as they are replanted from the shoot of another tree. As a result, all the world’s banana trees could be wiped out by a single disease.^[4]

6 Almond

The almond is a man-made hybrid of the wild almond, which is notoriously bitter and could be deadly when consumed in considerable amounts. The history of the modern almond is unclear, and scientists still can’t determine which variant of the wild almond was selectively bred to create the modern almond.^[5]

Scientists have their theories though. They suspect that the wild ancestor of the almond is the Amygdalus fenzliana (Fritsch) Lipsky because its trees, seeds, and fruits resemble the modern almond. It’s also found in Armenia and Azerbaijan, where today’s almond is believed to have been selectively bred by humans. Besides the origin, scientists cannot determine how our ancestors managed to create a perfect, sweet almond because the almond is poisonous.

SEE ALSO: 10 Foods That Exist Because Of Ancient Genetic Engineering

5 Grapefruit

The grapefruit is a relatively new hybrid. It’s believed, although not confirmed that the grapefruit first appeared around 1693 when Captain Shaddock transported pomelo (Citrus maxima) seeds to the West Indies and planted them close to some orange trees. The pomelo and orange later cross-pollinated to create the grapefruit (then called shaddocks). However, the grapefruit was still unknown outside the Caribbean.

Europeans eventually learned of this citrus fruit in 1750 when Reverend Griffith Hughes encountered one. Hughes was so surprised with the discovery that he named the grapefruit “the forbidden fruit.” That was its name until 1814 when John Lunan, a planter and Jamaica magistrate, called it a grapefruit because they resembled the smaller and unrelated grapes when they were still growing.

The grapefruit finally reached the United States in 1823, but was mistaken for the pomelo. It was only determined to be a distinct fruit in 1837. However, botanists were still confused about its origin. It wasn’t until 1948 that they discovered it was a hybrid of the pomelo and the orange.^[6]

4 Boysenberry

The boysenberry was created by Rudolph Boysen of Orange County, California in 1923. Boysen, a horticulturist, planted grafted berry vines on his in-law’s farm in Anaheim, eventually cultivating a successful hybrid. Unfortunately, Boysen’s berries never found commercial success and it seemed like his unique vine would go the way of the dodo bird.

Several years later, a fellow farmer from California named Walter Knott heard about the berry and asked its creator if he could try to make something of it. Knott successfully brought the dying hybrid back to life at his Buena Park, California farm. Knott then named the fruit after Boysen, and Knott’s Berry Farm eventually became the would famous amusement park we know today.

The boysenberry is considered to be a variant of the blackberry, although it’s actually a hybrid of a blackberry and either the loganberry or the red raspberry. For all we know, Boysen could have created the berry from of all three vines.

That said, tere are claims that the boysenberry is actually a cross between the Eastern dewberry and the man-made loganberry. The loganberry was created in 1881 when James Logan crossed a raspberry with a wild blackberry. However, the early boysenberry was not a commercial success due to its short shelf life. It decays just two days after harvest.^[7]

3 Tangelo

As we mentioned earlier, the tangelo is a man-made hybrid of the tangerine and the pomelo. In fact, that’s where the tangelo got its name. However, it is common for people to confuse the tangelo with the tangerine, mandarin, and orange.

To add to the confusion, there are different varieties of tangelos and all are not necessarily created from tangerines and pomelos. One common variant, the Minneola tangelo, is a hybrid of the tangerine and the Duncan grapefruit. Another variant was created by crossing a mandarin with a pomelo, which technically makes it an orange.

The tangelo is believed to have first appeared in the forests of Southeast Asia 3,500 years ago when insects cross-pollinated the mandarin with a fruit that is closely related to the grapefruit. However, today’s tangelos are the result of a selective breeding program that started in the 1800s.^[8]

At the forefront of the tangelo project was the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which created the popular Minneola tangelo sold across the United States. The USDA released the seeds of the Minneola tangelo in 1931. It’s named after the city of Minneola, Florida.

2 Carrots

Carrots haven’t always been orange. Natural carrots were either white or purple and probably inedible. There are even accounts that white carrots were eaten in the Roman Empire, but historians believe that they could have been parsnips, white carrots, or both. Ultimately, the modern orange carrot we eat today is a hybrid of the yellow carrot, which is a hybrid of the white carrot.

The earliest-known ancestor of the modern consumable carrot appeared in Persia in the 10th century. Some accounts say it was white, and others say it was purple. Unlike today’s carrots, those vegetables had lots of smaller roots of varying sizes. The Persians selectively bred the carrots with the biggest roots to create bigger roots and, ultimately, a big single root.

As the selective breeding continued, the carrots mutated from white or purple to yellow and finally orange. Selective breeding of carrots continued until modern times to improve their flavor and color.^[9]

1 Strawberry

The modern strawberry is a man-made hybrid of the smaller wild strawberry, which has a shorter shelf life as well as a better flavor and aroma. The modern strawberry first appeared in France in the 18th century. However, the hybridization program began much earlier.

In the 1300s, French botanists started planting wild strawberries in their gardens when they realized that wild strawberries reproduced by cloning. Strangely, some strawberries never produced fruits and half of the ones that did suddenly stopped cloning and making fruits after some years.

The French managed to create wild strawberries that were 15 to 20 times their normal size, but they were still incredibly small. Antoine Nicolas Duchesne created the modern strawberry on July 6, 1764, when he crossed a male Fragaria moschata with a female Fragaria chiloensis from Chile.^[10]

Before Duchesne created his strawberry, French botanists had never realized that strawberries had male and female parts. This was the reason some never produced fruits as some botanists had planted either males or females. Duchesne continued working on the strawberry until the French Revolution, leaving American and British botanists to perfect the modern strawberry.

Everything changes eventually and fruit is no exception to this rule. Here are 10 different fruits that have changed either in reputation or in their entirety.

10 Fruits, Nuts, And Vegetables You Did Not Know Were Man-Made

10 Banana

Many have wondered why banana flavoured candy does not taste at all similar to an actual standard banana: it is instead far more flavourful and sweeter. The taste difference is due to the fact that bananas in the early 20th century were rather different to the ones that we have today. The modern common banana that can be found in most stores today is a breed known as Cavendish, which rose to prominence after the Panama disease came and its fungus wiped out the then-popular Gros Michel banana. Many types of banana have become extinct in this way since the 19th century, with certain fungi complicating the lives of banana farmers, but no recent incident has had as much of an impact as wiping out the Gros Michel did. Despite the taste of common bananas having been different for over half a century now, the candies still have the exact same flavour, due to them being so popular.^[1] The change in taste is nothing compared to what bananas once looked like, though, as they once contained large, hard seeds that would make eating on them far more difficult than it is today.^[2]

9 Apricot

The apricot was once a staple of the food supplies given to troops in the Second World War, known for its ability to make the body feel fuller for longer. After a series of engine failures and technical issues on tanks that were transporting the fruit, the apricot gained an unfavourable reputation. Before long, the fruit was no longer allowed inside military vehicles, due only to the superstitions of the Marines who had witnessed such issues. The truth of the matter is: all rations were divided equally among each shipment, meaning that if a tank were to break down, one would most certainly find apricots present amongst the supplies. A staff sergeant when questioned about this superstition confirmed that it was still alive and well, even years after the Second World War. “I’ve heard from around the Corps that you should never bring any apricots in the vehicle with you” he stated, before joking “I don’t know where the hell you’d be getting apricots from in the middle of Afghanistan…”^[3]

8 Durian

The durian fruit usually plays a part in many Southeast Asian dishes as well as medicines and sweets. However, it is best known for its terrible odour. In 2020, a post office in Schweinfurt, Germany, was evacuated and emergency services were called because a Durian fruit sent in the post had sent the staff and customers into panic. The fruit resulted in six of the workers being rushed to hospital, due to the suspicion that the pungent smell was a type of dangerous gas.^[4] The fruit’s unbearable quality has led to the rules being changed in the Rapid Mass Transit in Singapore, with it being banned without exception on its underground. Durians now appear on signs forbidding smoking, food and flammable goods. Scientists charged with researching the fruit and its peculiar nature have discovered that it is the combination of many different chemicals that produce the scent, with four of those chemicals being previously unknown to science.^[5]

7 Peach

Selective breeding has changed the peach over the centuries to be many times larger than they were originally. Once multiple times smaller than the stone at the centre of a common peach, generations of farmers have manipulated the fruit and highlighted its more favourable qualities. It is said that the original peach, which is presumed to have been no larger than a cherry, was far more in line with the taste of a lentil than it was sweet.^[6]

6 Tomato

Perhaps the most obvious on this list, the tomato is the item that has changed most drastically in terms of reputation. For the longest time, it was commonly known to be a vegetable, before the fact that it was indeed a fruit rose to prominence. Nowadays, the saying “wisdom is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, whilst knowledge is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad” is said rather mockingly. In the 18th century, however, the tomato was a dreaded fruit, known as a “poison apple” due in part to its similar appearance to the common household apple, in both size and colour and the affect that it had on aristocrats. It was ultimately revealed that the reason why it had such an adverse effect on the upper class was because the acid in the tomato brought out the lead in fancy cutlery, causing the user to fall ill after consuming the fruit.^[7]

10 Ridiculous Myths People Believe About Fast Food

5 Watermelon

The watermelon has not always been smooth and red once opened up. How is this known? Well, the artist Giovanni Stanchi painted a variety of fruit, including that of a freshly cut watermelon. It only takes a glance at the painting to notice that the watermelon depicted looks vastly different to the more modern versions of the fruit; this is because since the 17th century, it has been domesticated and selectively bred to produce as much food as possible. Another vital change that has occurred is the change in colour from a dark shade to a brighter, more vibrant red. Through Stanchi’s painting, the fruit has been perfectly preserved for hundreds of years: if only in image.^[8]

4 Apple

Whilst many of the fruits on this list differ greatly to the form that they once took, the common apple shares many traits with its predecessor. It is in taste that it differs so greatly, as the fruit that we regularly purchase from our supermarkets is far sweeter than what could be found prior to the domestication of the apple. Whilst few facts are known about the beginning of this fruit’s specific timeline, one detail that has survived is the fact that it once tasted far more sour than it does today. One very important factor it does share in common with its predecessor is the deadliness of its pips. Apple pips contain a chemical that converts to cyanide in the human body and so should be avoided in large quantities.^[9]

3 Eggplant

The eggplant has a rich and varied history, during which they have taken the form of many different colours and sizes. Whilst the modern eggplant is commonly known to be purple, previous incarnations of the fruit have been green, yellow and white. One key difference between the modern and the former eggplant is the fact that it used to contain a rather prominent spine that ran from the bottom of the fruit to the root. This aspect has been abandoned for similar reasons as to why the watermelon became fuller and larger: to allow for more food to be taken from each crop. They used to be far rounder, similar to the shape of a tomato, rather than being the large, long fruit that they are today.^[10]

2 Blueberries

In the majority of berries grown in the US exist small transparent worms. These bugs began to appear in these fruits in 2008 and are known to scientists as ‘Drosophila suzukii’, an edible worm that are no harm at all. Over time, these worms grow into a particular type of fruit flies, unless eaten, of course. Once again, these animals are harmless! The worms are small and white, often described as essentially transparent and they only become fruit flies once the fruit has rotted, allowing the worms inside to drop below into the soil. They may be an issue to farmers, but to everyday fruit pickers the worms are not a problem. They can be consumed as any other fruit can be, without issue.^[11]

1 Kiwi

Many associate the kiwi with New Zealand, but in reality the fruit originated in China. It was simply a marketing trick that transferred the credit to the South Pacific nation, which went so far as to change the name of the fruit in question. Originally, the kiwi was known as ‘the Chinese gooseberry’, which when in its original Chinese meant the ‘macaque fruit.’ Macaques are a type of monkeys found throughout Asia specifically and it was their love for the kiwi that resulted in it being named after them. The adoption of the kiwi by New Zealand has been referred to as a “botanical hijack”, since it involved seeds being brought into the country from China, initially by Mary Isabel Fraser in 1904, who gave them to a New Zealand farmer who planted them and tended to the tree. It was not until 1910 that the first kiwis grew in the country and it was only fifty years after that that they were rebranded as ‘kiwifruit’, in 1959. The intention of this rebranding was to rid the fruit from the far less desired ‘gooseberries’ title. Needless to say, kiwis became popular and are still a staple of fruit bowls to this day. Fun fact: New Zealanders refer to themselves (and their national bird) as “kiwis” and to the fruit exclusively as “kiwifruit”.^[12]

10 Foods That Have Been Genetically Modified Beyond Recognition

About The Author: Pop culture fan and writer from Liverpool, UK.