Top 5 Shocking Things You Never Knew about Your Food

Fresh green celery isolated

Photo credit: bigstock

2.  Celery was once a wild plant

Celery was once a wild plant that was commonly known as “Smallage”. Its flavor was so potent and bitter, it was necessary for it to be cooked down for hours before it could be eaten.

When celery was still wild, it was a dark green color with hollow stalks and an intensely bitter flavor. The English started to cultivate and breed celery so the flavor would be more tolerable.

Farmers discovered that by covering the plant with dirt to keep it from receiving sunlight and making chlorophyll, a process called banking; it became more pale in color and the stalk more tender.

This breeding and banking of celery has resulted in the denser, more bland tasting veggie we now eat today.

PrevPage: 2 of 5Next
//