20 Foods That Looked Completely Different 100 Years Ago
Next time you’re munching on a banana or biting into a watermelon, consider this: your great-grandparents wouldn’t recognize most of what’s on your plate. The foods we take for granted today have undergone dramatic makeovers through selective breeding and agricultural innovation.
While we might think we’re eating the same foods that have been around forever, nature’s menu has had quite the extreme makeover. Let’s take a journey through the culinary time machine to see just how different our favorite foods used to look.
Spoiler alert: some of these transformations are so dramatic they might make you look at your grocery cart in a whole new way.
Bananas
The sweet, seedless yellow crescents we enjoy today would seem like science fiction to people from a century ago. Wild bananas were stubby, lumpy things filled with hard seeds that could crack a tooth. Their flesh was more starchy than sweet, and getting to it meant dealing with a jungle of seeds. Today’s bananas are all clones of a variety called the Cavendish, carefully cultivated to be the perfect grab-and-go snack.
The change was so dramatic that today’s bananas can’t even reproduce without human help – they’re botanical zombies, kept alive through farming rather than natural reproduction.
Watermelon
Those juicy, sweet watermelons in the produce section? They’re practically a different species from their ancestors. Early watermelons were bitter, pale, and mostly rind. Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings show watermelons that look more like round bitter gourds than the sweet red giants we know today.
It took thousands of years of selective breeding to transform them from bland survival food to summer picnic favorite. The dramatic change is perfectly captured in Renaissance paintings, where watermelons start showing the familiar red flesh, but still with awkward swirling patterns that would look out of place at modern barbecues.
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Corn
Original corn would be barely recognizable as food by today’s standards. Wild teosinte, corn’s ancestor, had tiny ears with just a few rock-hard kernels that could barely feed a squirrel. Through centuries of selective breeding by indigenous peoples in Mexico, these little grass seeds were transformed into the plump, golden ears we know today.
The change was so dramatic that when scientists first found teosinte, they didn’t even believe it was related to corn. It’s like the before-and-after picture of the most successful agricultural makeover in history.
Carrots
Those orange soldiers standing at attention in your vegetable drawer? They’re actually pretty new to the scene. Ancient carrots came in a rainbow of colors – purple, white, and yellow – but not orange. Dutch farmers in the 17th century bred them to be orange in honor of William of Orange, creating what became the standard color we know today.
The original purple carrots were so dark they could stain your cooking pots, while white ones looked more like pale parsnips than modern carrots. Their transformation wasn’t just cosmetic – modern carrots are also much sweeter and more tender than their ancient relatives.
Eggplant
Early eggplants looked more like eggs than the purple giants we know today – hence the name. They were small, white, and round, growing in clusters like eggs in a nest. Some varieties were even yellow, truly living up to their name.
Over time, they were bred to be bigger, meatier, and purple, though some cultures still prefer the smaller varieties. The change was so complete that the name ‘eggplant’ seems puzzling to many people today who’ve never seen the original versions.
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Peaches
Ancient peaches were small, cherry-sized fruits with very little flesh and a giant pit. They were also incredibly sour – more like tiny bitter almonds than the sweet, juicy fruits we enjoy today. The transformation from these humble beginnings to modern peaches is so dramatic that early European travelers to China, where peaches originated, didn’t believe the stories of how they used to look.
Today’s peaches have about 64 times more edible flesh than their ancestors, making them practically a different fruit entirely.
Tomatoes
Wild tomatoes were tiny berries, about the size of peas, growing in the Andes Mountains. They were likely more bitter than sweet and grew like small wild berries rather than the plump fruits we know today. The transformation to modern tomatoes involved thousands of years of selection for size, flavor, and variety.
Early cultivated tomatoes were actually yellow, leading to their Italian name, ‘pomodoro’ (golden apple). The rich red color we associate with tomatoes today was a later development.
Apples
The sweet, crisp apples in supermarkets would be unrecognizable to ancient gatherers. Wild apples, which still grow in Kazakhstan, are small, sour, and woody – more like oversized crab apples than modern varieties. Every apple variety we enjoy today is the result of careful grafting and selection.
The odds of growing a delicious apple from a random seed are so low that Johnny Appleseed’s trees mostly produced apples suitable only for making hard cider, not eating.
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Strawberries
Wild strawberries were tiny things the size of your fingernail, with intense flavor but minimal flesh. The modern strawberry is an accidental hybrid between two American species, discovered when European colonists brought different varieties together.
This chance meeting created the larger, juicier berries we know today. The original wild strawberries still grow in some places, offering intense bursts of flavor in miniature packages.
Cucumbers
Original cucumbers were spiky, bitter little things that looked more like medieval weapons than salad ingredients. They were initially grown for their defensive properties – those spikes weren’t just for show!
Through selective breeding, they became the smooth, mild-flavored vegetables we know today. The change was so significant that many cultures had to develop specific preparation techniques to make early cucumbers edible.
Kale
Before becoming a superfood celebrity, kale looked quite different. Ancient kale had loose leaves more like collard greens, without the frilly edges we know today. The tight, curly leaves of modern kale were developed through selective breeding to pack more nutrients into a smaller space.
It’s one of the few vegetables that actually became more nutritious through human intervention.
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Avocados
Wild avocados had tiny amounts of flesh and massive seeds – they were basically giant pits with a thin coating of pulp. They evolved to be swallowed whole by giant ground sloths, which went extinct thousands of years ago.
Human cultivation saved avocados from extinction by selecting for varieties with more flesh and smaller seeds. Without human intervention, avocados might have disappeared along with the megafauna that used to disperse their seeds.
Lettuce
Ancient lettuce was a tall, bitter plant that was grown more for its seeds than its leaves. It looked more like a dandelion gone to seed than the crisp heads we know today. The transformation to modern lettuce varieties involved selecting plants that wouldn’t bolt (grow tall and go to seed) quickly, creating the tender, leafy varieties we enjoy in salads today.
Brussels Sprouts
These tiny cabbage-like vegetables were originally spread out along tall stalks, looking more like palm trees than the neat rows of sprouts we know today. Wild versions were much more bitter and spread out, making them difficult to harvest.
Modern breeding created the compact, sweeter versions that grow in tight formation along their stalks.
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Almonds
Wild almonds were incredibly bitter and highly poisonous – eating a handful could be lethal. Early farmers discovered a natural mutation that made them sweet and edible, leading to careful cultivation of these safer varieties.
The difference between poisonous and edible almonds came down to a single genetic change, making this one of the riskier food domestication projects in history.
Pumpkins
Original pumpkins were small, hard, and bitter. They were so tough that they were primarily used as containers rather than food. Native Americans cultivated them not for pies but for their seeds and to use as containers once dried.
The large, sweet pumpkins we carve into jack-o’-lanterns and bake into pies are the result of thousands of years of selective breeding.
Cauliflower
Wild cauliflower was a loose collection of flower buds rather than the dense white head we know today. It took careful selection to create the compact, blanched heads that are now standard.
The process was so successful that modern cauliflower actually represents arrested flower development – it’s technically a mutant that never fully develops its flowers.
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Peas
Wild peas were tiny, starchy things in tough pods that would split and scatter their seeds explosively when ripe. Early farmers had to select pods that would stay closed, eventually creating the plump, sweet peas we enjoy today.
The change was so significant that modern peas can’t even reproduce without human help – they need us to remove them from their pods.
Lemon
The original citrus family tree is surprisingly complex, with most modern citrus fruits being hybrids of three main ancestors. Wild lemons were much more bitter and filled with seeds, making them practically inedible.
The sweet-sour balance of modern lemons is the result of careful breeding and selection over centuries.
Grapefruit
This relative newcomer to the citrus family is a hybrid accident discovered in Barbados. The original grapefruits were much more bitter and filled with seeds. Modern varieties have been bred to be sweeter and less bitter, though some people still find them too tart for their taste.
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The Future on Our Plates
Looking at these transformations, it’s clear that our food has been constantly evolving. What we consider “natural” today is often the result of thousands of years of human selection and cultivation. Modern genetic research is helping us understand these changes better than ever while new breeding techniques continue to shape the future of our food.
The next time someone says we shouldn’t mess with our food’s genetics, remember – we’ve been doing exactly that for thousands of years. The real question isn’t whether we should change our food but how we want it to change next. Who knows? In another hundred years, people might look back at our produce with the same amazement we feel looking at ancient varieties.
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