The Funny Foods We Eat

We never think about this, but some of our everyday foods are definitely rather oddball, from the botanical perspective.

Take corn. Our corn, or maize, as it's called in much of the world, is very much a man-created plant. Nothing very similar to our familiar corn exists in the wild. In fact, the field of corn genetics is a whole specialty within botany. What is clear is that indigenous American peoples—think Aztecs and Mayans and their predecessors—developed corn from a plant that had a much smaller ear. There is a wild plant called teosinte that has been considered a likely candidate for the ancestor of corn. Among the many ways in which native New World civilizations have usually not gotten the credit they're due is that we overlook the great achievement in plant breeding that resulted in the modern corn plant that we take for granted.

Another perhaps odd food is the banana. Is there any other fruit that is similar to a banana? Did you know that a banana plant or tree only produces one crop of bananas in its lifetime? Then it's cut down and a new tree planted. You'd think that, with the time and trouble involved, that bananas would be scarce and expensive, whereas bananas are a rather cheap, plentiful, and very healthful food source. (They are high in potassium, which we need plenty of, because it can counterbalance the excessive sodium that's common in our modern diets.)

Also, you know those stringy things that you see on a banana when you peel it? I think I read recently that they are analogous to the substance in the inner bark of a tree that carries nourishment for the tree.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein