The Plants We Eat

The story of the modern strawberry is really the story of a French spy and a brilliant teenager.

Garlic is one of those rare plants that just doesn’t like to make seeds very much.

The story of lettuce is one of sex, drugs, and diarrhea.

Not much of a food in and of itself, this is the story of an ancient plant that has been used from everything from bows to cancer medication.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this protein packed legume made its way to the United States, but once it did it had a huge impact on American cuisine. From peanut butter to roasting and boiling, there’s nothing quite as versatile as the peanut.

Sugarcane is the most energetically efficient plant on Earth, storing the energy it gets from the sun in sugar that humans use in their coffee and cake, but sugarcane’s history has its dark side too.

Corn is the quintessential modern crop. From breeding, to stuffing it full of fertilizer and transferring new genes into its DNA, corn is the most manipulated crop in the world.

The blueberry is one of the very few plants native to the United States that has made its way to our dinner plates, but this move is relatively recent, mostly because it wasn’t until recently that we learned the trick to growing this tasty treat.

What if a plant was genetically engineered by nature instead of by man? Such is the case with the amazing sweet potato.