PARADISE AWARD

Food

Watermellon

This 17th-century painting by Giovanni Stanchi depicts a watermelon that looks strikingly different from modern melons, as Vox points out. A cross-section of the one in the painting, which was made between 1645 and 1672, appears to have swirly shapes embedded in six triangular pie-shaped pieces.

Over time, humans have bred watermelons to have a red, fleshy interior — which is actually the placenta — like the ones seen here. Some people think the watermelon in Stanchi's painting may just be unripe or unwatered, but the black seeds in the painting suggest that it was, in fact, ripe.

Banana

The first bananas may have been cultivated at least 7,000 years ago — and possibly as early as 10,000 years ago — in what is now Papua New Guinea. They were also grown in Southeast Asia. Modern bananas came from two wild varieties, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, which had large, hard seeds, like the ones in this photo.

The hybrid produced the delicious modern banana, with its handy, graspable shape and peelable covering. Compared to its ancestor, the fruit has much smaller seeds, tastes better, and is packed with nutrients.

Carrot

The earliest known carrots were grown in the 10th century in Persia and Asia Minor. These were thought to originally be purple or white with a thin, forked root — like those shown here — but they lost their purple pigment and became a yellow color.

Farmers domesticated these thin, white roots, which had a strong flavor and biennial flower, into these large, tasty orange roots that are an annual winter crop.

Corn

Perhaps the most iconic example of selective breeding is North American sweetcorn, which was bred from the barely edible teosinte plant. Natural corn, shown here, was first domesticated in 7,000 BC and was dry like a raw potato, according to this infographic by chemistry teacher James Kennedy.

Today, corn is 1,000 times larger than it was 9,000 years ago and much easier to peel and grow. Also, 6.6% of it is made up of sugar, compared with just 1.9% in natural corn, according to Kennedy. About half of these changes occurred since the 15th century, when European settlers started cultivating the crop.

Peach

Peaches used to be small, cherry-like fruits with little flesh. They were first domesticated around 4,000 B.C. by the ancient Chinese and tasted earthy and slightly salty, "like a lentil," according to Kennedy.

But after thousands of years of farmers selectively breeding them, peaches are now 64 times larger, 27% juicier, and 4% sweeter.

So next time someone tells you we shouldn't be eating food that's been genetically modified, you can tell them we already are.

Avocados

Avocados are the most ancient ingredients used to date. It got domesticated in the third millennium B.C. Firstly; people used to call it as the fruit named forest oil. The initial use of avocado was to pit which they crushed and mixed with the soot. Today they used it as for the medicinal purposes. But by the initial, the avocado was the entire fruit used at that time.

cucumbers

The fresh cucumbers have their ancestors to be thorny. And the fruit from inside was full of seeds. But the problem was that we could not eat them because of their poisonous nature. They had some other uses for which we cultivate them. We use them for therapeutic purposes. Later the cucumber got an introduction to India around 6,000 years ago. Then people used it for eating purposes. Well, I must say a lot of change was there in it.

Tomatos

Initially, tomatoes were small in size as the dark berries which you would have liked a lot if seen today. The plants first originated in South America. Many others believed it to be poisonous for us as we take the case of Europe. People do not want to eat as they find that the tomatoes are poisonous to them. But slowly the fruit got evolved. And later people started growing them as the ornamental plants. But today these are the juicy shrubs which people used for eating and is the main ingredient for the vegetables.