r/interestingasfuck • u/titleguy2004 • 8h ago
Modern day domesticated corn compared to its original wild non-domestic version
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u/RedaNassef 8h ago
this is literally the ultimate ancient gmo project, imagine looking at that tiny wild grass and thinking "yeah let's spend a few thousand generations turning this into butter-soaked movie snacks
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u/Away-Activity-469 8h ago
More than that, the original plant had to be processed and mixed with crushed limestone before it was even edible.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 6h ago
It still does if you intend to make it a staple. You can eat corn but nixtimilization makes its protein available so that beans and maize can be a complete protein intake.
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u/theiman2 3h ago
I wouldn't have thought that cooking fires would be hot enough to make limestone caustic enough to do this, but I was wrong! Per Wikipedia,
In limestone-bedrock regions like those in Guatemala and southern Mexico, heated chunks of limestone would naturally be used, and experiments show that hot limestone makes the cooking water sufficiently alkaline to cause nixtamalization. Archaeological evidence of this conjecture has been found in southern Utah.
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u/SlipperySalmon3 7h ago
It's fascinating that they managed this. If I were a farmer with no understanding of how traits were passed down, my first thought would be to eat the biggest, nicest foods, and use the ones that suck for seeds, but they had to do the complete opposite for food to be what it is today.
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u/Relysti 6h ago
Gotta remember that while we were selecting the crops, nature was still selecting us. The farmers that planted bad seeds didn't have as much reproductive success as those that figured it out.
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u/Laetitian 2h ago
....much more crucially, nature was still selecting the *corn*. We just help the process along; nature is what decides which crops survive and succeed in the way we use them.
Not to say selective breeding isn't a complicated skill, just that nature is still what's putting in the work, and even if the human is at the absolute skill floor, nature will still do a lot.
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u/TeamChevy86 6h ago
Imagine spending thousands of generation to become a butter soaked movie snack but also a gigantic kernel ribbed dildo
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u/NoSpecial284 8h ago
Carrots have gone through a similar “upgrade” as well. Bananas also have an interesting history.
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u/angelsfish 8h ago
also watermelon!
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u/NoSpecial284 8h ago
I haven’t looked in to watermelon yet 👀👀
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u/titleguy2004 8h ago
Same with potatoes, which were originally poisonous in the wild before the toxins were bred out in the ancient Americas, where they were still seen as poisonous by the Europeans, same with the tomato
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u/Lieunderthemoon 8h ago
Literally in the nightshade family!
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u/titleguy2004 8h ago
As well as tobacco, though that’s still considered a poisonous plant
(and yes, Tomacco is possible to crossbreed)
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u/bhayn01 7h ago
tastes like grandma’s kisses….
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u/ephamus2 6h ago
My grandma made quite tomato-y salsa and smoked. I miss her and your comment/joke made me happy 🩷
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u/LitLitten 7h ago
there was one edible species to begin with, emphasis on edible and not delectable. thank the Islamic golden age for gifting Europe and the rest of the world the fruit of Egyptian efforts. incredible journey and evolution of the watermelon today.
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u/PraetorKiev 6h ago
Wait until everyone learns how many vegetables are actually just cabbage
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u/Capn_Sully 6h ago
Cabbage isn't even cabbage! Derived from wild mustard plants, along with Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and a whole host of other produce.
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u/sullen_selkie 5h ago
“My mustards!” doesn’t really have the same ring to it, tho
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u/shountaitheimmortal 7h ago
Not many people realize that the majority of what we grow is vastly different to what they were 100 500 or 1000 years ago we’ve been altering crops for generations to get them to both taste good and bring a better yield for us and making them bigger to feed more people, this is stuff we need to teach
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u/gigaflops_ 6h ago
Even the last few decades... growing up in the 2000s something like 80% of watermelons still had the inedible black seeds, now I can't even tell you the last time I saw a non-seedless watermelon. Cotton candy grapes weren't commercially available until 2011
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u/LivingtheLaws013 5h ago
I've noticed blackberries get extremely huge the past few years. Just my anecdotal experience tho
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u/Immediate-Way-4065 3h ago
Seems to me they’re making a comeback, I think a lot of people found the seedless ones tasteless and were nostalgic for the previous variety
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u/CoffeeWith2MuchCream 3h ago
The best varieties of water melon have seeds in them. Nobody has made a seedless hybrid that is quite as good.
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u/nlolsen8 2h ago
Yes a core memory from childhood is spitting watermelon seeds on the 4th of July and my kid doesn't even know watermelon have seeds and they're 11
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u/OriginalNeat4015 1h ago
Must be a regional thing, I have watermelons every year when they’re in season and I’ve never seen seedless ones in my country.
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u/phree1337 4h ago
The majority of avocado trees farmed today are all from a mutant that a mailman grew in the 1920s/30s 🥑
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u/LittleBunInaBigWorld 3h ago
And that the produce we see on supermarket shelves is more like a board of representatives for their respective communities, except the communitues didn't vote for them, don't know who they are and have nothing in common. There are thousands of corn species, even more tomatoes, and just as many potatoes. The ones we've standardised have not been bred to prioritise flavour, the focus has been on producing for easy transportation and a long shelf life.
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u/PenitentAnomaly 7h ago
Reminds of the Kirk Cameron/Ray Comfort video in which they emphatically declare that the modern yellow grocery store banana is an "atheist's nightmare" as the ergonomic grip and convenient packaging is clear evidence that a loving God had clearly invented bananas for the benefit of mankind.
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u/PollyBeans 3h ago
How do they explain pineapple?
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u/ZhanBlue 2h ago
“God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.“
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u/Inevitable_Top69 42m ago
The same way. Only a loving god could have crafted something that can be so pleasurably inserted into your anal cavity.
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u/LivingtheLaws013 5h ago
Weird that they chose one of the most phalic foods we have
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u/MauiUpcountry808 1h ago
Not to mention that most bananas in stores today are Cavendish which are clones and Kirk Cameron surely believes that to be sacrilege.
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u/keytoarson_ 8h ago
There's some tradwife that'll take this and post a bunch of videos saying the corn on the right is way better.
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u/Freshiiiiii 7h ago
Fun fact, there’s more calories in a single kernel of modern corn than a whole “cob” (ear?) of wild teosinte.
Nowadays more calories are a negative, but at the time that meant survival
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u/_gmmaann_ 7h ago
Cob is the center. Ear is the whole thing. So ear is correct
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u/Brockzillattv 7h ago
But where is the drum?
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u/BreezeBo 6h ago
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u/Amazing_Fix_2399 4h ago
Can’t wait to see what quinoa looks in 10000 years of selective breeding
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u/The_Onyx_Ogre 7h ago
And a creationist will tell you god designed the banana to perfectly fit in a hand and has a built in cap to peel from.
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u/Fabled_Platypus 4h ago
Is it just me or does the domesticated corn look like the lady in this painting
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u/comeagaincharlemagne 4h ago
This is a GMO btw. I really hate anti GMO discourse since most of those people have no idea all of our food has been genetically modified since the advent of agriculture thousands of years ago.
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u/DarthFreeza9000 7h ago
I swear to god, either I manifested this post or the AI is stalking me, because I mentioned that we had the original plant for corn but not for the onion the other day. We have no clue what happened to the original onion plant, but we have detailed information on corn’s evolutionary journey, and I think that’s pretty cool
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u/snowillis 6h ago
It’s almost as if someone’s using an algorithm to personalize what you see on Reddit.
This makes me wonder about the evolutionary history of other fruits and vegetables. I might need to do a deep dive into this hopefully it doesn’t affect my algorithm too much.
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u/Definitely_wasnt_me 6h ago
Anybody who “avoids gmo” foods needs to eat corn and melon and berries and apples and basically anything from this era.
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u/AdDisastrous6738 7h ago
You think that’s nuts? Look at wheat. Genetically it’s not the same thing as the wheat that was around only a hundred years ago. It has something like twice the number of chromosomes and exponentially more gluten. I have a theory that’s why wheat and gluten allergies are so common nowadays.
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u/Powerful-Substance33 8h ago
If only they could do this to my 7inches
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u/Hitmanjr-77 8h ago
I have 7 inches too…if I start from the butthole.
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u/youdidittoyouagain 8h ago
You’re supposed to measure from the pelvic bone, from that metric I’m sitting alright, but freestanding…. I’m embarrassed
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u/2x4x93 8h ago
If you have seven quit complaining
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u/cheatme1 7h ago
Isn't the original extinct or was that bananas or apples forgot which ones are extinct at this point
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u/Majestic_Bierd 4h ago
Somebody tell him about Lemons
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNEzD5n6SAs&pp=ygURRW1wZXJvciBvbmNlIHNhaWQ%3D
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u/UseDue6373 3h ago
Ooo I got some of those in my back yard right now! I mixed them in with painted hill and a sweet corn version so I look forward to whatever technicolor cobs I get
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u/being_sentient 3h ago
Yes,the agricultural technologies of ancient Mexico get little credit compared to germs and steel but they changed the world to such a degree that even today more than half of the words diet is derived from Native America.
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u/ManyRespect1833 2h ago
You just proved yourself wrong. “In which the genetic material has been altered IN A WAY THAT DOES NOT OCCUR NATURALLY BY MATING AND OR NATURAL RECOMBINATIONS”… mating and natural recombination IS selective breeding. So what you just posted confirms GMO is genetic modification that happens not in that way.
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u/Dragonarchitect 2h ago
It’s too late I’ve already depicted myself as the chad modern corn cob and you as the Wojack Teosinte (original wild plant)
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u/Hitmanjr-77 8h ago
All our food has been modified. It sounds scary but it’s really not. I can tell you that it’s actually healthier, easier to grow, taste better, and looks way more appetizing than the original versions. People hear the word “modified” and instantly think that means bad. Ignorance is all it is.