The difficulty of debating the subject of genetically modified (GM) foods is they are so new that we don’t really know how they affect the human body–they just haven’t existed long enough to draw conclusive facts. However, we don’t need to wait around for decades to see how scientifically engineered foods will impact our nutritional health, since they’re already causing enough trouble in other ways to prove they’re not worth our while.

Consider the following.

10Create Superbugs and Superweeds

The good thing about designing a plant with an insecticide gene is it eliminates a lot of unwanted bugs. The downside is that only the strongest insects survive, resulting in a new class of superbugs resistant to both the crops’ implanted toxins and spray-on chemicals.

In 2011, scientists examined 13 major pests and found that five were immune to the poisons genetically bred into GM plants like Bt corn and Bt cotton. Similarly, farmers are battling ultra-hardy weeds which aren’t responding to glyphosate–the herbicide marketed as Roundup. As a result farmers are forced to use even more chemicals to combat these superweeds. According to the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, GM crops cause herbicide use to increase 25 percent per year.

What sometimes confuses people and the data, however, is that farmers may actually experience a lower need for chemicals in the first few years of growing a GM crop. Yet, once the pests and weeds develop immunity, farmers have little choice except to spray ever-increasing amounts of herbicides and pesticides–effectively raising their own operating costs and pollution levels.

9Kill Bees and Butterflies

One of the advertised benefits of GM foods is they are pest and weedkiller resistant, which supposedly leads to greater crop yields. Unfortunately, the methods GMO companies use to pest-proof their crops is also suspected to kill vital beneficial bugs, like bees and butterflies. At first consideration it might seem like more food for the world should trump the lives of a few annoying bugs, but that’s shortsighted thinking since the elimination of pollinating insects could eventually lead to a collapse in the food supply. This is because insect pollination supports one-third of food crops (with honeybees responsible for 80 percent of that number). Thus, instead of solving food shortage problems, GM foods may actually make things much, much worse.

Why are GMO producers allowed to grow their butterfly and bee-killing crops? Unfortunately, with the slurry of insecticides, fungicides, genetically modified crops, and high-powered weedkillers present in modern farming, it’s hard to prove if GMOs are truly the variable to blame. Just as one study proves GM crops are the problem another study is released claiming they are totally safe. Meanwhile, honeybees continue to decline at a rate of 30 percent per year and butterfly populations have reached an all-time low.

Although it’s unclear whether GM crops are inherently bad for beneficial insects, they’re at the very least perpetuating the widespread use of chemicals, which undoubtedly harms insects and the “weeds” they depend on (such as butterflies which lay their eggs on milkweed).

8Farmers Can’t Harvest Seeds

Fundamentally, farming is a simple process: plant seeds, grow crops, harvest crops, and gather seeds from the plants for the next season. Sadly, GMO companies like Monsanto take this last step away from farmers and raise expenses even further by forcing the farmers to continually buy the premium-priced GM seeds every growing season. In fact, as was shown in the Bowman v. Monsanto court case, it is illegal in the US for someone growing a Monsanto crop to harvest the seeds and use them later. The Bowman case went all the way to the Supreme Court and, despite public outcry, the 70-year-old farmer was unanimously found guilty of patent infringement after he purchased and used second generation Monsanto seeds.

Preventing farmers from harvesting seeds means big businesses could eventually have total control over the world’s seed supply and prices. Currently, just three mega companies control over half of the global seed market, which has caused prices to skyrocket. For example, the average price of planting an acre of soybeans has gone up 325 percent since 1995. Things get even scarier when you consider Monsanto has developed and owns a patent on a “terminator gene” which can make a plant produce sterile seeds–but don’t worry, they’ve promised not to use the technology.

7Cross-Pollination Contaminates Regular Crops

One of the major problems with GM crops is they are difficult to contain, which means they could be extremely hard to get rid of if we later decide they are a bad idea. Scientists have yet to figure out a way to control cross-pollination, so no matter how diligent a small, organic farmer is in using natural growing methods, he can’t stop pollen from a GM farm from blowing in, fertilizing, and turning his crops into hybrids. While it’s fairly easy to reduce contamination in some plants, with others–like canola and corn–it’s nearly impossible.

Early on, Monsanto and others claimed cross-pollination wouldn’t be an issue if farms were sufficiently spread apart, yet this proved inaccurate when they found pollen could travel much farther than expected (several kilometers or more). As GM crops grow in popularity, we may not be able to choose between consuming or avoiding them as all plants will be “infected.” Even buying food with an organic label doesn’t put you totally in the clear as some governing agencies, like the USDA, don’t revoke a farm’s organic status if a few plants were cross-pollinated with a GM crop.

6It’s Illegal to Accidentally Grow a GM Plant

It seems there’s a basic flaw in how GM crops are governed. For one, they’re illegal to own unless you buy them directly from an approved distributor every season, but on the other hand the seeds and pollen from these plants are flying around everywhere. What happens to a farmer who, from cross-pollination, unintentionally grows a Monsanto plant? While Monsanto has never sued anyone for having trace amounts of non-purchased GMOs in their fields, they have sued farmers who claimed to be growing large amounts of patented crops by accident.

For instance, Percy Schmeiser, a 74-year-old Canadian canola farmer, was sued by Monsanto when it was discovered a majority of his crop contained the patented Roundup Ready gene. Schmeiser said he didn’t know how his fields became contaminated, yet he suspected it was from a neighboring farm that grew GM crops. His best guess was the plants closest to the neighbor’s farm were most likely to survive his own herbicide treatments and those were the plants and seeds his hired hands unwittingly harvested. In the end, the courts sided with Monsanto, saying Schmeiser “knew or ought to have known” his seeds were resistant to Roundup.

Complicating matters further, farmers often buy “commodity” bags of seeds that come from a mishmash of sources–including GMO farms. So, if a farmer plants a Monsanto seed that was randomly mixed in with the rest of the bag and later harvests more seeds from the plant, he can be sued for not paying royalties to the GMO giant. This is exactly what happened to Vernon Bowman in the Bowman v. Monsanto case.

5Increased Suicide Rates

Farming is always a gamble, especially in places like India, where farmers depend on a strong monsoon season to provide enough water for their crops. If the monsoon fails, so does their livelihood. For this reason and a myriad of other socio-economic challenges, suicide numbers among Indian farmers are staggeringly high (about 1,000 per month). GM crops are making matters worse as desperate farmers borrow money at extortionate rates to pay for “magic” GM seeds that, unfortunately, require twice the amount of water and don’t live up to their pest-free claims. When bollworms continue to decimate their plants or the monsoon doesn’t deliver, hopeless farmers crushed with insurmountable debt see no way out except to drink a deadly glass of insecticide.

Despite there being over 125,000 suicides since the introduction of GM crops in India, and, as reported in a New York Times article, the ridiculously high prices of seeds and pesticides are causing farmers to make less money than ever. Additionally, as pests and weeds become increasingly immune to insecticides, farmers have to spend more and more money on chemicals. And let’s not forget, they are also legally required to buy new seeds every season unless they want to be sued or forced to burn all their plants.

While Monsanto sticks to its story of creating higher crop yields, there are many who disagree, including India’s Agricultural Ministry. The ministry says Monsanto’s Bt cotton was successful for five years, yet now produces no better than any other crop. It blames GMOs for the current rash of suicides among cotton farmers. In 2012, a panel of scientists commissioned by India’s Supreme Court recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials for all GM crops until further testing was done and stricter regulations created. It’s uncertain when or if the government will put the advice into effect.

4Little Government Oversight

The sad thing is, the “superbugs” created by Roundup Ready plants may have been avoided if farmers were required to adhere to safe farming practices. For example, farmers who follow GM guidelines and plant “refuges” (areas of non-Bt crops) adjacent to their GM fields, have extremely lower rates of pest resistance. However, a lack of training, resources, and enforcement means many farmers don’t follow the refuge technique and superbugs continue to proliferate. This is likely what has led to the resurgence of the bollworm in India as the bug has become unaffected by Bt cotton, which was supposed to be bollworm-proof.

Additionally, while 64 countries–including China and the European Union–require labeling of genetically engineered foods, the United States (the largest producer of GM crops) still has no such laws. This makes it incredibly difficult for people to choose whether or not they want to consume GM foods, as many folks aren’t even aware when they’re eating a GM product. For instance, the USDA says 94% of soy and 75% of all corn grown in the U.S. is genetically modified. When you consider some type of corn, corn syrup, or soy is in just about every pre-packaged food, there’s a good chance Americans are eating a lot more GMOs than they realized. On top of that, many farm animals are consuming these engineered foods and passing them along in their meat.

3Revolving Door between Government and Biotech Workers

As often as GMO protestors shout out the dangers of “frankenfoods,” biotech companies respond, scientific studies in hand, that GM foods are perfectly safe. It’s admittedly hard to make sense of the endless contradictory information, but there’s at least one fact that should raise the eyebrow of even the most neutral party: the former attorney and vice president of Monsanto, Michael Taylor, is now the Deputy Commissioner at the United States Food and Drug Administration. Taylor has also held positions at the USDA and is often criticized for being in the “revolving door” of the public and private sector.

Even those who don’t gravitate towards conspiracy theories can’t help but wonder if Taylor genuinely took the position with the FDA for his love of food safety and civil service or if he has ulterior motives to protect his agribusiness buddies. This makes it hard to trust the FDA when they say GM foods pose no other risks than their natural counterparts. Trust diminishes even further when you consider that, back in the ’90s, FDA scientists warned that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to “different risks” as compared to conventional foods. For some reason, those findings didn’t match official policy.

2Harm Biodiversity

Biological diversity, or biodiversity, refers to the variety of lifeforms in a particular region or on the earth as a whole. Maintaining biodiversity is important since every living thing plays a pivotal role in the circle of life we currently enjoy.

Industrial farming reduces biodiversity as agribusinesses clear the land of all native plants and focus on producing only one type of crop. This large-scale monoculture crop production has resulted in a 75 percent reduction in plant diversity since the 1900s. GM farms make things worse because not only do they produce a single plant species (e.g. corn, soybeans, rice), but all the plants within the species come from one modified source plant and are genetically identical. Having such unvaried crops is troublesome as it makes our food supply particularly susceptible to climate change, disease, and pests. And it’s not just the biodiversity of plants that are affected. As mentioned, insects like bees and butterflies are already suffering, and herbicides are known to result in birth defects and population decline in amphibians, birds, soil organisms, and marine ecosystems.

Businesses like Monsanto are further hampering biodiversity by systematically buying up seed firms and replacing tried and true conventional varieties with their higher-priced, genetically engineered versions. While some argue Monsanto’s ultimate goal is to control the world’s food supply, it’s more likely their motivation is simply higher profits. After all, they make much more money by selling their patented, expensive, must-buy-every-season seeds than by offering quality traditional seeds.

1Distract from Healthy, Environmentally Friendly Technologies

One of the main strategies GM companies have used to push their way to the agriculture forefront is the promise of preventing a world food crisis and being the solution for hungry people in Africa and elsewhere. However, that assurance hasn’t exactly panned out since GM crop yields are highly variable and many countries simply don’t want to eat food designed in a laboratory.

In fact, in 1998, 24 delegates from 18 African countries told the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, “We strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly nor economically beneficial to us. We do not believe that such companies or gene technologies will help our farmers to produce the food that is needed in the 21st century. On the contrary, we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millennia, and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.”

So, if GMOs aren’t the answer, how are we to feed the world’s rapidly growing population? Fortunately, there are many viable solutions being advocated by farmers and scientists alike. For example, as reported by the 1996 National Research Council in the U.S., there are currently many crops such as pearl millet, fonio, and African rice that are nutritious, tasty, and produce well in harsh climates. Additionally, environmentally friendly, low-water farming methods, such as the System of Rice Intensification (which improves rice production by 50-100 percent) is being used as a model for growing other crops in a sustainable manner. Other ideas include the decentralization of farming, urban farming, greenhouses on top of grocery stores, aquaponics, and more. Diverting funds and resources away from GMOs could allow one or more of these natural, wholesome practices to flourish.

Content and copy writer by day and list writer by night, S.Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, the unusual, and topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S.Grant at [email protected].

Head into the supermarket today, and you will find countless items on the shelf that proudly bear non-GMO labels. They’re usually located near where a product claims it’s gluten or fat-free. The display of this label, while saying nothing at all about GMOs, is clearly meant to relieve you, the consumer. It assures you that the food you’re going to eat is healthy because it’s not genetically modified!

There’s an entire organization, the Non-GMO Project, set up with a little orange butterfly logo and everything to help you identify products that are not genetically modified. This heavily implies GMOs are unhealthy or even dangerous, but is it? According to the Non-GMO Project, genetically modified organisms are made of a combination of plant, animal, bacteria, and virus genes that never occur in nature, and there are no long-term studies to determine if they’re safe. 

So, let’s see what the science says. Over 90% of all the cotton, soy, and corn grown in the United States in 2024 is genetically modified. Are there dangers or not, and what exactly are they? Is your GMP rice safe to eat, or are you doomed to become a food mutant?

The Dangers

Let’s start with some potential dangers of GMOs, as detailed by the Non-GMO Project. They point out on their site two things that may often be overlooked. One is that GMO seeds may be a burden to farmers and even damaging to their livelihoods. To prevent GMO crops from contaminating non-GMO and vice versa, safeguards need to be in place. Imagine how hard it is to prevent cross-pollination between crops that would result in new crops that may be unintentionally GMO or not. This can seriously affect how the food can grow, be labeled, and sold. 

Additionally, GMO seeds are patented by the companies that make them. This means farmers can’t hold seeds or produce their own, and if they try to plant seeds produced by their own crops, companies like Monsanto can sue them for patent infringement. 

GMO crops can also be extremely bad for the environment. One of the things being modified in many crops is their tolerance to herbicides. You want crops that are hearty and won’t die easily, and that seems good at first. But, herbicide tolerance means a drastic increase in herbicide use. In Canada alone, sales of herbicides like Roundup, which has been linked to cancer cases for years, increased by almost 200%.

It’s also been suggested that increased herbicide use has led to a decline in native plant species while allowing herbicide-resistant weeds to proliferate. 

No Risk and Potential Improvements

There are some environmental factors to consider, but they are also contrasted with some benefits. Some herbicide use went up, but pesticides and other chemical use have been reduced globally by 37%, according to some research. Crop yields went up by 22%, and farm profits increased by 64%.

Because pesticides don’t need to be sprayed as often, greenhouse gas emissions also declined thanks to GMO crops. In 2018, this was the equivalent of 15 million fewer cars being on the road.

In countries less advanced than the United States and other Western nations, farming is traditionally much more rigorous and dangerous. GMO crops have significantly reduced pesticide poisonings in developing nations. In South Africa, a serious drop in farmers suffering ill effects from pesticides has been recorded. In China, one-third of farmers not using GMO cotton crops reported poisoning compared to 9% who did. In India, between 2003 and 2019, at least 38 million fewer poisonings have occurred, but that number could be much higher.

The first GMO crop in the United States was the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994. It was modified to slow the ripening process and stop it from going bad as quickly as other tomatoes. Research from The Institute for Responsible Technology quickly came out to denounce GMO foods. Their studies claim that toxic effects in rats happened almost immediately. No other scientists were ever able to replicate the results in lab conditions. 

Numerous studies conducted by different groups in different countries around the world have been unable to find adverse health effects in subjects who consume genetically modified foods. Even at a microscopic level, there are no effects specifically associated with GMOs.

Rats fed GMO corn have also been studied to see if any defects can be passed down generationally. Even after four generations, rats show no adverse effect in any of the tissues or organs that one might expect damage to show up in if there were birth defects being passed on.

GMO crops are not modified in ways that would cause health issues in humans or any other animal that eats some. The work is extremely tightly regulated to ensure that the genes being used to modify these organisms are well understood, and regulation is far more strict than it is for non-GMO food. 

Rather than being some dangerous Mad Science project, the gene in the Flavr Savr tomato stopped it from spoiling was already in the tomato. Scientists copied the gene and inserted it into a bacteria cell that was stripped of its harmful material, essentially using it as a shell to hold the gene and nothing more. Once inserted into the tomato, the gene interferes with the creation of an enzyme that speeds up spoiling, allowing the tomato to last longer. Nothing harmful was introduced, and nothing had the potential to cause allergies, cancer, mutation, or anything else beyond what was already there. The belief that they could is based solely on a poor understanding of science or outright lies. 

Cancer research groups have also pointed out that there is no logic behind any fear of cancer from GMO foods because they simply don’t work that way. There’s no evidence that they have caused cancer in the past, nor is there a scientifically sound explanation for how they could. There have been no notable increases in cancer cases in the US since the introduction of GMOs.

GMO Foods Save Lives

In the Western World, it can be harder to appreciate just how important GMO crops are. For us, a tomato that stays fresher longer may not seem like a big deal. In parts of the world where famine is a real risk, and lives are lost every day, GMO crops have been credited with saving one billion lives. Crops with higher yields that resist insects and drought mean people who would otherwise starve get to eat. 

GMO apples that don’t oxidize and turn brown as quickly help reduce food waste, and GMO soybeans can produce healthier oil. While the novelty of something like Arctic Apples is one example of how GMOs can alter the food we eat, at its core, it’s about ensuring there is enough food to eat and that food is nutritious.

Genetically modified rice that was created to increase the nutrient beta-carotene in the grain was expected to save millions of lives. Because it converts into vitamin A after consumption, it would have been invaluable in parts of the world where a lack of vitamin A costs a million lives per year plus half as many cases of blindness. Unfortunately, despite no evidence of any danger, Golden Rice was never planted or made available because anti-GMO groups, including Greenpeace, rallied against it and convinced governments to ban it. To this day, it has never been grown at scale despite studies showing it provides more vitamin A than spinach.

Nearly 800 million people on earth regularly experience hunger. About 9 million of those will die every year. GMO crops alone cannot solve that problem – they’ve already been around for decades, and clearly, hunger persists, but they can reduce those numbers. Higher crop yields with better nutrition and greater resistance mean more people can eat. 

What GMOs Are Out There?

We’ve already addressed many GMO foods that exist in the world right now. From apples to corn to rice, there are a lot of options. Odds are you’ve already eaten grains, soy products, sugar, and all kinds of things that have been genetically modified already, maybe even without knowing it. There are also some more novel foods as well.

AquAdvantage salmon are genetically modified salmon that can grow to market size in half the time. This is one of the first living, breathing GMOs out there, and people seem to be more nervous about these fish than they are about plants despite the same lack of evidence that there’s any danger. The media took to calling them Frankenfish. 

Pigs, known for producing an abundance of potentially toxic manure thanks to high amounts of phosphorus, have also been genetically modified in Canada. These new EnviroPigs have been engineered to naturally produce an enzyme, normally supplemented in their diets by farmers, that helps reduce the dangerous phosphorus.  Some cows fart and burp less, which means 25% less methane. 

One of the most dramatic creations from the world of genetic engineering is goats bred to produce spider silk. The genes to create the silk modified the glands in the goats that produce milk so that when you milk the goat, you get spider silk. These experiments have actually continued because spider silk has any number of potential uses in the world, it’s just preposterously hard to harvest normally, thanks to the fact spiders are remarkably small and also uncooperative.

Scientists are currently working on developing venomous cabbage. Genes from scorpions are being used to allow the cabbage to produce venom in its leaves that will be modified to be harmless to humans but will still serve as a potent deterrent to pests like caterpillars. As a natural form of pesticide, the process could save a fortune in chemicals while saving the environment at the same time. 

All of these sound weird at first, and you can see how someone can easily spin any of them to sound dangerous.  However, the obvious purpose behind the modifications and the benefits is pretty clear as well once you take some time to learn about them. That’s the purpose behind any GMO: to make things better.

The Controversy

If science says that there’s nothing wrong with GMO crops, then why are so many individuals, organizations, and even governments against them? A group of biotechnologists from Belgium once published a paper arguing that part of the reason there’s so much pushback against GMOs is that it just feels right. Our minds can easily wrap around why they should be bad, and so we just believe they are.

The fact is, most people who are opposed to GMOs don’t know as much as they think they know. The ones most opposed and think they know the most have been shown to know the least in studies. And there’s nothing wrong with not knowing something, almost none of us knew about GMOs before that first tomato, it’s worth learning about something before condemning it.

For some, like chefs, the concern with GMOs is less the science and more things like corporate control of food supplies. That’s much more of an issue than the potential health concerns.

The Anti-GMO Activist Who Switched

For what it’s worth, some people started against GMOs and actually changed their opinions after learning more about them. Environmental activist Mark Lynas used to actually destroy GMO crops. He felt that science was tampering with some of the fundamental building blocks of nature and that it was something he not only couldn’t support but actively had to try to stop.

As the years passed and he became concerned with more aspects of the environment, like climate change, he also got more into the science behind them and realized that his initial stance had been very anti-science. After learning about the processes behind GMO foods, he reversed his position and urged others who shared his prior beliefs to do the same and not stand in the way of progress that could feed hungry people.

As with anything, the key to understanding is learning and then making up your mind once you have all the details, not just some of them.

Would you eat or even recognize these foods in their original forms? Chances are that you wouldn’t.

Genetically modified foods are a big source of debate these days. Some don’t want anything to do with modern GMOs, while others are all for them. However, a lot of people don’t realize that many of today’s fruits and vegetables wouldn’t exist without careful selective breeding. In fact, the original versions of these popular plants might be downright unrecognizable to the modern public.

10 Carrots

The earliest known cultivated carrots were first grown in the 10th century in Asia Minor and Persia. Before it was domesticated, the wild carrot was spread all over the world. Seeds up to 5,000 years old have been discovered in Europe.

The carrot’s original appearance was small and white. It also had more of a forked appearance like a plant root. Most likely, ancient cultures used it as a medicinal plant.^[1]

It’s thought that the carrot’s transformation into the orange, sweet, less bitter descendant so popular today took many centuries to breed. Today’s orange carrots are known as Carotene or Western carrots, while their cousins are known as Asiatic or Eastern carrots, which have purple and sometimes yellow roots.

9 Eggplants

No one can mistake a big, purple, shiny eggplant for anything other than what it is. However, eggplants actually have many varieties. The eggplant was first domesticated in what is modern-day India and Burma. Today, it’s widely cultivated in the land that stretches from northeast India and Burma to Northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and southwest China.

The word “eggplant” is said to come from the British occupation of India, where the plants were white and egg-shaped. Writings from as early as 300 BC describe the plant in a variety of ways—as the “blue” fruit, as the royal melon, and as having spines.^[2]

Over the centuries, the plant migrated across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America. The plant in its various forms was often included in early art and literature from these regions.

8 Bananas

The fleshy yellow fruit found in so many kids’ lunchboxes was first cultivated in Papua New Guinea between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. The banana is yet another edible plant with several varieties, most of which are found today in Asia.

The long, yellow variety, known as the Cavendish, is the result of centuries of careful breeding by diligent agriculturalists. It descends from two wild banana species: Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The former has flesh that isn’t very tasty when eaten raw, and the latter is a short, stubby little thing with lots of hard, pea-sized seeds in the middle.^[3]

Thousands of years ago, banana cultivators discovered that cross-pollinating these two plants sometimes produced a sweet, yellow, seedless fruit that was also rich in nutrients. As this variety is seedless, these bananas must be produced by human-assisted asexual propagation (otherwise known as cloning).

This form of reproduction makes the Cavendish much more susceptible to disease than its hardy ancestor. Since the plants are genetically uniform, a banana-killing pestilence could quickly and easily wipe out whole crops. For this reason, cultivators are careful with their output lest the world experience a banana apocalypse.

7 Tomatoes

Wild Tiny Pimp might sound like an unfortunate street name, but it’s actually the name of a tomato species. In fact, it’s the tomato species from which all other tomatoes descend. Plant scientists call it Solanum pimpinellifolium, or just “pimp.”

Today, these pea-sized tomatoes grow on scraggly vines found in northern Peru and southern Ecuador. South Americans first domesticated them during the pre-Columbian era.^[4] Then these tomatoes spread to Europe and eventually back to North America.

Today’s wide assortment of domesticated tomatoes all come from the tiny pimp and, interestingly enough, only have five percent genetic variation between them. Crossbreeding modern types with the earlier wild ones, including the pimp, produces a plant that’s hardier and less susceptible to disease.

6 Watermelons

Theories abound concerning where exactly the watermelon originated. Historians only agree that it first grew somewhere in Africa, spread to the Mediterranean, and later popped up in Europe.

Harry Paris, a horticulturalist at the Agricultural Research Organization in Israel, has concluded that the watermelon’s earliest ancestor was first cultivated in Egypt some 4,000 years ago. This ancient fruit was hard, bitter, and pale green in color—a far cry from today’s sweet, fleshy variety.

So why would the ancient Egyptians want to spend time and energy growing something like that?

Paris believes that they were cultivated simply for their water. During the dry season, watermelons stored well and the Egyptians could pound them to a pulp and extract their water content. He also believes that the Egyptians were the ones who began the selective breeding process that ultimately led to watermelon as we know it.^[5]

5 Corn

It’s hard to imagine a world without this most essential staple crop. Corn was one of the first food plants cultivated at the start of human agriculture some 10,000 years ago in the area that is modern-day Mexico. At one time, ears of corn were very small and gradually became bigger over time thanks to artificial selection.

If we go back even further, we find that corn’s ancient ancestor is a wild grass plant called teosinte. It looks very little like corn, though they both produce kernels. On a genetic level, though, the two plants are quite similar.^[6]

Geneticist George Beadle found in his experiments that there were only five chromosomes responsible for the most noticeable differences between the two plants. Teosinte underwent small genetic changes over time that eventually resulted in the appearance of maize.

4 Peaches

The peach has quite a long history. In fact, peach pit fossils have been discovered in China that are 2.5 million years old. These peaches were smaller than today’s variety. They more closely resembled small cherries and had very little flesh.^[7]

It took about 3,000 years for the peach to reach its modern appearance. Unsurprisingly, peaches have an important part in Chinese culture. They symbolize long life and are commonly found in markets throughout the country.

3 Avocados

The fleshy fruit responsible for the tastiness of guacamole was originally a snack for prehistoric giant mammals 65.5 million years ago. In fact, these animals were the avocados’ sole mode of transportation since they would eat the fruit whole and then poop out the seed later in another location.^[8]

The original avocado had a bigger pit (if you can imagine that) and much less flesh than today’s Hass avocados. Sometime after the large mammals died out, humans took to cultivating the fruit so that it became fleshier and more appealing over time.

2 Papayas

Though papaya is eaten around the world today, it originated in the tropical climate of Latin America. The modern commercial papaya descends from the wild papaya, and they both have very different appearances.

The wild papaya is round and about the size of a plum.^[9] Some species even closely resemble a cacao pod. The ancient Maya were the first to cultivate papaya about 4,000 years ago. Growing the fruit is a complicated process because the grower doesn’t know which seeds will produce fruit-bearing plants until after they’ve begun to grow.

1 Pumpkins

The original word for “pumpkin” came from the Greek word pepon, which means “large melon.” Over time, the word was morphed into what we now know it as. Pumpkins and squash are believed to have originated in the early Americas. The earliest pumpkins were the size of a softball, tasted bitter, and were toxic when raw.

Only large prehistoric mammals could eat them, so these creatures alone were responsible for spreading the seeds around. When these mammals died out, the pumpkin could have gone with them if it weren’t for human cultivation.^[10]

Humans would go on to find various uses for hollowed-out pumpkins and gourds, such as containers for water. Eventually, they began eating pumpkins and saving the seeds of the tastier types for replanting. It kind of makes you appreciate pumpkin spice lattes a bit more.

Tiffany is a freelance writer hailing from Southern California. She’s a fan of pop science and considers herself a human repository of random facts.