Food is one of our biggest life staples, but the food we commonly eat today is very different from traditional foods. Changes in technology, farming techniques, and consumer tastes have transformed the appearance, flavor, and nutritional value of many things. Below, we are going to be looking at 18 foods that have evolved so much that they barely resemble the same product.
Tomatoes
So much has changed about tomatoes. They have become mealy, bland, and uniformly grown for size and storage rather than flavor. Compared to the juicy, voluptuous Heirloom varieties that remain but are outshone by tasteless ones at grocery stores, even those dwindling gems available during the summer months suffer from tough skin and lack of flavor.
Bananas
The Gros Michel banana variety was wiped out by a fungal disease in the 1950s; it was more substantial, creamier, and tasted richer than many other banana varieties. More common now is the Cavendish Banana (which is disease-resistant but offers a different taste and texture.
Apples
The sweetest, prettiest apples we eat today have been bred by human hands for hundreds of years. Two hundred years ago, almost all apples grown had far deeper flavors compared to what is available for many in America today.
Bread
Bread takes a much different form now than it did years ago. Older bread was naturally fermented and made from whole grain, giving it a much denser texture than the fluffy store-bought loaves we are used to now. Many forms of bread, particularly factory-made white flour with its refined ingredients and preservatives, are made for extra shelf life. This resulted in a softer, better-tasting product but one that lacked significant amounts of nutrition.
Carrots
We are used to seeing carrots as the bright orange color that they have become. However, this was not always and still is not what nature intended. Originally, they were available in different colors, such as purple, yellow, and white. Nowadays we do not have the colorful and various carrots that our ancestors would have farmed.
Peanuts
Commercial peanuts have been bred for uniform size and shape, which has, unfortunately affected their taste and also oil content. The peanuts we eat nowadays are much sweeter.
Potatoes
Most potatoes were large and misshaped years ago, but they were bred to avoid diseases. The few types which dominate the market now have replaced the many shapes, colors, and flavors present in traditional potato varieties. Older varieties provided more vitamins and minerals than those we are currently offered today.
Watermelon
Old watermelons were tinier, and they had a lot more seeds than the bigger seedless ones we consume at present. The growing program has been concentrating on increasing sweetness and size and decreasing the seed content. Old illustrations or historical depictions of watermelons show fruit with a different texture and much lower flesh-to-rind ratio, which goes on to show how dramatically fruit has evolved.
Rice
Global needs have changed rice, and newer cultivars are selected for either high yield potential and earliness or to be more disease-resistant. As a result, the texture and taste of rice have changed. Unique in their taste and nutritional values, traditional varieties such as wild rice or red rice get overshadowed by white polished rice which have become so dominant today.
Milk
Industrial farming practices have turned milk production on its head. To increase the amount of milk from cows, they now treat them with hormones and antibiotics; this changes the nutritional quality as well as taste of the milk. Adding pasteurization and the homogenized process has modified both the texture of milk significantly and its taste, thus making today’s milk very different from that of centuries prior.
Corn
Corn/maize is heavily engineered through traditional breeding and genetic engineering. Most modern, sweet ears of corn are the result of generations-long efforts to make cobs sweeter and more tender. That includes field corn, which is used for animal feed and processed foods but has been genetically modified to produce higher yields. This corn was small and much different from the modern commercialized maize, which we regularly have, in terms of it being less sweet and higher fibered due to more starch replacing sugars.
Salmon
The rise of aquaculture has changed salmon dramatically. Caged salmon are fed a different diet that alters their nutritional profile, increasing fat and reducing omega-3 fatty acids compared to wild-sourced. Farmed salmon, on the other hand, do not eat krill or similar colored crustaceans and are therefore colorless.
Strawberries
Earlier varieties of strawberries were found to be small-based and packed with a strong aroma. Today’s strawberries, whilst pretty to look at and with a heart-shaped simplicity, are devoid in flavor depth compared to flavors obtainable from earlier heirloom types such as the Alpine or maybe the Mara des Bois.
Soybeans
Soybeans have been modified to produce higher yields and resist pests. This has, in turn, influenced their nutritional content and flavor. Ancient soybeans were sold as whole foods, for things such as tofu and tempeh, whereas modern day soybeans are frequently used in far less wholesome ways, including production oil, feed, and a plethora of other chemicals.
Coffee
Coffee beans have been hybridized for pest resistance and yield, not always in favor of flavor. The recent bustle of Specialty Coffee has brought some interest back to these Heirlooms. Most commercial-oriented coffee production targets yield and disease-resistant varieties.
Eggs
With the introduction of industrial farming, how eggs were produced changed drastically. Eggs are somewhat larger and produced from a different kind of hen than eggs just 30 years ago. These changes have very real effects on the nutritional profile and flavor of eggs with a noticeable difference in taste to most consumers between modern conventional eggs and those from free-range/pasture-raised layers.
Beef
The beef industry, in particular, has leaned harder on breeding cattle that are either larger or grow to size more quickly over the past several decades, affecting both texture and flavor. It has also sparked worries that more high-fat beef could pose risks to health and hurt the environment due in part to water use on large-scale cattle ranches.
Oranges
Oranges have undergone significant changes over time. Historically, wild oranges were much smaller, bitter, and full of seeds. The sweet, juicy, and seedless oranges we enjoy today are the result of centuries of selective breeding and hybridization. In particular, the development of the navel orange in the early 19th century revolutionized the citrus industry, providing a convenient, easy-to-peel fruit with no seeds.
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