Recently, One Hundred Dollar a Month reader, Tiffany, sent me a link on Facebook to an article about the ways fruits and vegetables have changed over thousands of years. Turns out, the uber sweet fruits that we take for granted today haven’t always been the dessert-like whole food that we have come to expect. Maybe that’s why our ancestors were so fit? Not only did their fruit have less naturally occurring sugars, but it took them a heck of a lot more effort to get them to an edible state. {Can you say beating the outside of the original watermelon with a stone until its thick skin broke open, revealing a tiny, bitter bit of fruit? Uh, sounds exhausting.}
The article broke down a couple of the most common fruits. Let me just blow your mind with these little tidbits: The original peach {sounds gangsta :)} was about 1/4 the size of what we know peaches to be now. It had waxy skin, was 36% stone, and only about 64% of the flesh was edible. Corn was NOTHING like the big ear of potentially buttery goodness we eat today. It was about 9 mm long, and it tasted like a dry potato. Oh, and just to get into it, it had to be hammered repeatedly.
After reading the article, I’ve decided, we’re spoiled. We have only the sweetest, juiciest varieties of fruits and veggies. In fact, we ship them in from all over the world just to make sure. I think it has gotten even worse since I was a wee kid. When I was younger, the fruit was primarily what grew best in your region. We just didn’t have access to everything under the sun {literally}. How about you, do you remember eating a certain fruit or veggie as a kid that tastes different now?
~Mavis
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Debbie says
I just finished reading “Eating on the wild side ” ..very informational about getting the best out the food available to us now.
Practical Parsimony says
I know that watermelons I ate as a child were better than now! Peaches, too. It seems even locally, people want to make a buck and pick things too soon.
However, it is interesting that fruit has been improved for our tastes. I knew that our corn is so much better than it was. It would be interesting to be able to taste and see fruit and vegetables from our far past.
Jan K says
Tomatoes! Even store bought tomatoes tasted like, well, tomatoes. They were always red and never like mutant styrofoam in texture .
Wendy says
I grew heirloom corn this year (Gentlemen’s Shoepeg) and was dismayed at how different it tasted. Not all that sweet and a bit tougher. I had wondered if I picked it past its prime (I don’t think I did), but maybe this is a more likely explanation?
Cecily says
I grew the same variety this year and was also disappointed. The kernels were tough, sticky and bland. Glad to know that I didn’t make a mistake in harvesting. I thought that the article calling the modern varieties “artificial” was silly. “Improved” would be a better description IMO.
Kelli M says
Maybe you’d know how to answer this for me — we got an ear of fresh blue corn in our CSA box. How on earth do we use it? I guess I could make hominy, but… I’ve only got the one ear.
Linda says
When I was growing up, my dad was obsessed with growing tomatoes. He wanted to grow them hydroponically. We had a room in the house dedicated to his hydroponics. But I can’t eat store bought conventional tomatoes now. Fresh, home grown tomatoes are hard to beat.
Jules says
My parents raised the 10 of us with lots of homegrown food – peach trees, apples, cherries, pears, and a garden that was huge. So I didn’t eat store bought unless it was things we couldn’t grow like peas, celery, or bananas. To this day I cannot even eat beans in a can from a store. Or canned fruit from a store; only home canned (and I am so thankful Mom taught me how to do that!)