In just over a century the world has lost three-quarters of its food diversity(Image: Webvilla/Unsplash/CC0 1.0 )
Vegetables are probably the most important source of nutrients in our diets but especially in North America, they tend to be treated as a side dish. Even the expression “meat and potatoes,” which refers to the most basic or important parts of something, tells us that vegetables are an afterthought.
Many North Americans grew up eating vegetables that came from a can. This is especially so in places where a short growing season meant that vegetables had to be preserved if there was to be a reliable supply throughout the long winter months. Peas, beans, and corn were often canned because it was a convenient way to preserve them before modern refrigeration. Spinach, beets, and asparagus are among the other vegetables that were commonly eaten from a can. And of course, tomatoes were processed in a number of different ways – from stewed tomatoes and tomato juice, to tomato sauces and tomato paste.
Most of us have a pretty singular idea of what certain vegetables should look like. Carrots are orange and pointy while tomatoes are red and plump. Peas are green, onions yellow-skinned, and potatoes have white or yellowish flesh. Part of the reason we think this way is that for several generations we’ve relied on chain supermarket stores to supply our vegetables.
Companies that sell the same product in many markets want things to look uniform. So they only choose one kind of beet to can, and they only include one type of pumpkin to process and to show on the side of their can. Between buying these uniform vegetables at the grocery store, and even growing the popular hybrids in our home gardens, we have come to think of each vegetable as only one type. We have forgotten that there are red, yellow, and purple carrots, that some beans and peas grow in purple or yellow pods, that beets can have rings of colour or even be white.
Did you know that since the 1900s we have lost 75% of all food crops around the world? When people talk about human impact on our planet they often focus on animals that are endangered or extinct, but we rarely talk about what’s happening to the world’s food supply. Three out of every 4 food plants have become extinct in just over a century. And of the remaining plants, only 10% are used commercially.
The focus on uniformity and the shift to growing a single crop have placed the world’s food supply in jeopardy. We worry about GMOs, but the possibility of another widespread famine like the Irish Potato Famine is just as pressing a concern. All it takes is a single disease to wipe out farm after farm because so many farmers are growing the same exact crops.
So if you get the chance to eat white asparagus or purple tomatoes, do it! Better still, ask for them at your local market and grow a few in your vegetable patch. Save your seeds, and trade them with other gardeners in order to ensure the supply. We can’t bring back the plants that have gone extinct, but we can boost the planet’s biodiversity and help nurse it back to a healthy level.
Original content © 2016 Kyla Matton Osborne
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I grew up eating my vegetables from a garden. As I grew up on a farm. I would much rather have fresh veggies or something someone canned. Compared to one you purchase from a store. less sodium.
Yes Sandy, the fresh produce or home canning have far less salt than commercially canned veggies. And they taste so much better!
I grew up eating a lot of canned vegetables and today I buy very few of them. I do buy canned tomatoes, and sometimes mushrooms when the fresh ones are really expensive. And occasionally I'll buy canned beets or some creamed corn to make a shepherd's pie. But other than that, we try to buy fresh in season or frozen. And we buy at the farmers market or get produce from neighbours who garden before we buy anything commercially packaged.
The added benefit to this is that vegetables and fruit you grow yourself tastes better becasuwe you can pick it at the peak of ripeness.
So true, Barb! And because you only need to pick enough for right away, there is less worry about fresh food spoiling. A cut-and-come-again garden for salad greens is a great example of just picking enough for a few meals and then coming back for more later. The greens will just keep growing back over the season, and you don't have to worry about harvesting them in large quantity unless they're threatening to bolt.
Agree with your advice: “ask at your local market”. If you regularly shop at a particular grocery store, you'd be surprised at how responsive the manager is to certain products you request them to stock on their shelves. So next time you're at the store looking for something you would like to try and you don't see it, just ask! You can even mention it to the cashier at the check out. You never know they might get it. Even if they don't, it was free to ask! Doesn't cost you a penny! :)
Yes, the article is the best article providing latest information and most of the people do not know about how many fruits and vegetables have been disappeared from earth why? I do not know but there are some reasons behind it.
In an era when supermarket conformity rules, it is refreshing to discover that there are still wonderful, traditional varieties of fruit and veg out there waiting to be grown and tasted. What about Glaskin's Perpetual rhubarb, quick to settle in and ready to be cut in its first year? Or Alderman peas, deliciously sweet even when they reach the size of marbles? Not to mention Ashmead's Kernel apple, as devoured and praised by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: ‘exploding with champagne-sherbet juice infused with a lingering scent of orange blossom'.
But Forgotten Fruits is more than a guide to these unusual varieties. It's also a fascinating work of natural and social history. Did you know, for example, that beetroot was instrumental in ending the slave trade? Or that observing gooseberries helped Charles Darwin to arrive at his theory of evolution? Or that there are over two thousand varieties of cooking and eating apples in Britain alone?
If you want to grow a bit of history in your garden, if you'd like to get a real taste of the huge variety of local produce that Britain has to offer, or even if you just want to find out a bit more about how rural life in the UK has evolved over the past centuries, Forgotten Fruits will prove irresistible -- and enlightening -- reading.
Great article! We try to do our share by growing our own vegetables and buying from local farmers.