What fruit or veggie that I might find in my local grocer’s produce section most closely resembles its pre-cultivated/ unaltered-by-humans state?
(Hope that makes sense)
Do you mean what fruit or vegetable currently available at your local store is most like the native variety it was derived from? My WAG would be a mushroom. I don’t think most are very different from the wild varieties they came from… but I could be wrong.
Another option might be cactus.
I’ve seen wild asparagus, and it looks the same as what you’d find in the store. I’m not positive whether there’s a flavor difference between cultivated and wild, but I don’t think so…?
Coconut?
Here is a video on how certain fruits and vegetables have changed over the years. Common Foods In Their Originally Undomesticated Forms - YouTube
I am guessing figs. Also missing Colibri, who would have probably known the answer
Brazil nuts must be up there (assuming we’re allowing nuts).
In 2019, global production of Brazil nuts (in shells) was 78,256 tonnes, most of which derive from wild harvests in tropical forests, especially the Amazon regions of Brazil and Bolivia which produced 91% of the world total.
j
Since this is the Dope, I shall nitpick, and point out that a mushroom is neither a fruit nor a vegetable!
Though it is sold in the produce section, at least in my supermarket.
Further pedantic nitpick: “If they sold your grandmother in the produce section of your supermarket, would that maker her a fruit or vegetable?”
Have you met my grandmother?
Unless she’s been in prison or alcohol/drug rehab, probably not.
I have GOT to get out more . . .
The local wild raspberries and strawberries are pretty similar to the cultivated ones in shape and taste, they’re just smaller
Another possibility, edible seaweed, though that’s algae (and also not sold in the produce section where I live).
It’s an interesting question, as many or most produce items are very different from their wild origins.
That’s true. It’s a fungus, but since I buy my mushrooms in a grocery store as opposed to a fungus store I thought it still counted.
I have, on occasion, seen dandelion greens in the grocery store (though usually only either in the hippie co-op grocery store, or special ordered).
The Incas and Aztecs were apparently eating something (in appearance, anyway) similar to today’s cherry tomatoes as long ago as 700 AD. Swiss physician and botanist Gaspard Bauhin in his magnum opus “Pinax Theatri Botanici” in 1623 described a tomato with fruit like cherries, so they date back quite a ways, no matter what the Israelis claim.
There’s also a variety you can currently grow called Matt’s Wild Cherry, a wild-collected tomato from Mexico. Whether it’s a genuine wild tomato or an escape from a cultivated variety, I don’t know.
I’ll bite - what do the Israelis claim?
Dan
Given that uncontrolled volunteer tomatoes usually yield cherry-sized fruit, I would have guessed that that was what the wild type was like.
Were cherry tomatoes supposedly invented in Israel?
I know only that the Hebrew word for “tomato” is from the same root as “buttocks.”