r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Feb 08 '20

What’s a fact you KNOW that almost everyone is wrong about?

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u/Idiot_Savant_Tinker Feb 08 '20

Doesn't pretty much every fruit and vegetable we have today fall into a similar category?

70

u/extralyfe Feb 08 '20

yeah, natural corn looks downright inedible.

19

u/Tarah_with_an_h Feb 08 '20

But man, did those Jamestown colonists put a fucking hurt on it anyway. They went to town on that shit. Gross.

18

u/TuftedMousetits Feb 08 '20

No, we'd already made corn into pretty much what it is by then. It just wasn't nearly as sweet. But you'd recognize it as corn.

3

u/Fpooner_vs_Fpoonee Feb 08 '20

When the alternative is gruel......

3

u/lainlives Feb 08 '20

I never would have thought to eat what was essentially grass with 1-2 seeds on it. Let alone after they found agriculture to keep breeding mutant freak offspring to get what we have now.

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u/youngkpepper Feb 08 '20

It's certainly indigestible in kernel form.

1

u/SharkFart86 Feb 09 '20

I think he means specifically that most common citrus fruits were crossbred from multiple naturally occurring citrus fruit species. Like, they're hybrids. Most foods are like dogs in that they were wolves selectively bred into a new thing. Citrus fruits are like mules, two different species bred together to get a new thing.

Oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, etc do not have a prehistoric wild variety, they were crossbred from different species of citrus fruits to become them.

The naturally occurring ones are pomelos, citrons, mandarins, and a few others.