In recent years, so-called 'natural' or 'organic' foods have become very trendy with everyone, from hipsters to soccer moms. Obviously, people want to buy food that's as healthy as possible for their families and organic vegetables and fruit are seen as the healthiest Mother Nature has to offer. The funny thing is, most of us wouldn't recognize an all-natural fruit or vegetable if we fell over one, as they are so different from the ones that we buy in the supermarket. Over the decades, growers have gradually made modifications to our produce so that in some cases, the modern version barely resembles the original. Pesticides, fertilizer, plant nutrients and breeding techniques have all contributed to a massive shift in what regular fruits and vegetables look like! Take a look and see what we mean!
Tomatoes used to be tiny and more flavorsome! Unfortunately, as they've been grown bigger, they've also lost some of their 'tomatoey' taste!
Grapefruit never existed in the wild. It was invented when breeders crossed oranges with a fruit called the pummelo, pictured on the left.
There's, technically, no such thing as wild broccoli. Broccoli is a 2000-year-old mutation of a form of cabbage!
Peaches, in days gone by, didn't taste at all yummy and juicy like they do today, thanks to selective breeding. Apparently, in the olden times, wild peaches tasted a bit like lentils!
Eating a wild banana is a real chore, due to its structure (see picture on the left). Today, banana's have been bred to be easier to eat, as well as more nutritious.
Before there was corn, there was Teosinte. It had hard seeds which growers, somehow, managed to replace with soft kernels.
Selective breeding was able to get rid of the spikes eggplants used to have, as well as increasing their size by rather a lot!
The giant carrots that you see on supermarket shelves barely resemble the weedy wild ones, you see on the left!
These days, watermelons look like the picture on the right because years ago, someone discovered how to extend the placenta of the fruit!
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