Just like animals — which have changed a lot since humans started breeding them for food — fruits and vegetables have undergone drastic transformations since humans became agriculturally focused.
Scroll through the images below to see side-by-side comparisons of wild produce versus what we see today!
Wild Carrot vs. Modern Carrot[ATTACH=full]69784[/ATTACH]
Originally, carrots were biennial plants, meaning they took two years to complete their biological cycle.
In the wild, carrots are very thin, forked root vegetables, with a white or yellowish color.
Since human domestication, carrots have transformed into large, tasty orange roots; also there are purple, black, red, white, and yellow carrots.[ATTACH=full]69785[/ATTACH]
2.Wild Peach vs. Modern Peach[ATTACH=full]69786[/ATTACH]
We think of peaches as big, fuzzy stone fruits that are positively dripping with juice, but it wasn’t always that way.
Peaches used to be small, cherry-like fruits with little flesh. They were first domesticated around 4,000 B.C. by the ancient Chinese and tasted earthy and slightly salty, “like a lentil ” according to some experts.
Wild Eggplant vs. Modern Eggplant[ATTACH=full]69787[/ATTACH]
Throughout their history, eggplants have come in a wide array of shapes and colors, such as white, blue, purple, and yellow.
They also used to have spines where the plant’s stem connects to the flowers.
After centuries of selective breeding, you have to look hard to find an eggplant that’s not smooth, oblong, and uniformly black.
Wikipedia / Flickr, keepon
Wild Banana vs. Modern Banana[ATTACH=full]69788[/ATTACH]
First cultivated by humans at around 8,000 B.C., the banana is an early example of domesticated plants.
We’re used to a thick yellow peel full of sweet, creamy fruit with tiny seeds but this is completely different from how bananas grew before human modification.
Wikipedia / Flickr, stevendepolo
5.Wild Watermelon vs. Modern Watermelon[ATTACH=full]69789[/ATTACH]
As you can see from this 17th-century painting by Giovanni Stanchi (left), watermelons from just a few centuries ago looked strikingly different from modern melons.
Rather than the juicy, pink-fleshed, seedless varieties we enjoy in the summer time, ancient watermelons had far less juicy areas and seeds were abundant. It’s only a long period of human breeding that turned it into the red flesh fruit we know today.
Wikipedia / Flickr, akaitori
Wild Cabbage vs. Modern Cabbage[ATTACH=full]69790[/ATTACH]
Cabbage, like its relatives broccoli and kale, is a cultivar of one ancient species, Brassica oleracea , originally a wild mustard plant that is now often referred to as wild cabbage.
Food Insight reports: “Some of the Brassica oleracea cabbages had a mutation for longer, curlier leaves, and these were bred together to produce kale.
“Some cabbages with larger flower buds were bred together to produce broccoli and cauliflower.
“Through additional breeding and genetic changes, cauliflower eventually became white, and broccoli developed a long stem.”
Flickr, aris_gionis / Flickr, jeepersmedia
Wild Tomatoes vs. Modern Tomatoes[ATTACH=full]69791[/ATTACH]
It’s hard to imagine tomatoes as anything other than the plump, juicy vegetable that grows on bushes in my garden, but that’s not the way they started out! in
Ancient tomatoes were much smaller and darker, resembling a berry more than the apple-shaped food we know today.
Because it looked so much like a poisonous plant, the deadly nightshade, Europeans were afraid to eat the tomato for many years.
There is nothing more bland than the ‘modern’ Western supermarket banana, thanks to Monsanto et.al. That thread yesterday on Indonesian banana varieties was a reassuring message that we are from losing that biodiversity.
In Greece, we still have several distinct banana sorts: ng’ae. muraaru, muchiri, mutore, kiganda, etc.