DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE EATING?
By Kate Gardiner
When grocery shopping you generally have an idea of the origins of your purchases. For example, beef, milk and cheese comes from cattle; pork chops and bacon come from pigs; eggs and drumsticks from chicken; and fish, well it comes from fish! But have you ever stopped to consider what your produce (your fruits and vegetables) might have looked like before being cut, washed and put in a bin? What exactly are you eating when you have corn on the cob? Would you recognize asparagus growing in a field if you saw it? How about potatoes, broccoli or even garlic? Is there a tofu plant growing somewhere in the world? The truth of the matter is, when it comes to produce, many of us non-gardeners or non-botanists are still in the dark.
Let’s make this simple. Vegetables can be placed into 5 categories: leaves, roots, stems, flowers and fruit.
The easiest category to identify would be leaves. We eat leaves all the time; our salads, sandwiches and even burgers are often filled with leaves! The whole purpose of a leaf is to make food for a plant. Leaves are where photosynthesis occurs, a reaction by which a plant uses sunlight to create food (sugars) from water and carbon dioxide. They are easily distinguishable since most are flat and green from chlorophyll (the pigments that trap the light energy), but in some cases like cabbage, the green is masked by other pigments and appear reddish/purple. Other examples of leaves include lettuce, spinach and many herbs.
What may surprise you is that onions and garlic are also leaves. The layers of an onion or the cloves of garlic are individual leaves. In green onions, they have elongated above ground to become photosynthetic while in red and white onions there are storage leaves underground. Both onions and garlic are bulbs which will eventually result in shoots.
The next grouping would be stems. Stems of plants hold leaves in the sun as well as transport nutrients and water through tissues called phloem and xylem. Now, most people would recognize asparagus as being a stem as but would you think of a potato as a stem? Potatoes are underground stems called tubers that store starch for growth. It is because of this starch storage that potatoes so nutritious.
Another vegetable with an underground storage organ is the carrot. Carrots are actually taproots that store food for the following year. Carrots that are bought in the stores are one year old; the first year of growth produces considerable food that is used in their second year to flower and set seed. By the end of their second year, the taproot is so shriveled and empty; you would have a hard time recognizing it. Other examples of a root that is commonly eaten would be the turnip or parsnip.
Although it has become fashionable to have edible flowers in salads, we have been eating flowers for centuries. Broccoli, artichoke and cauliflower are all examples of flowers which are commonly consumed. Even the expensive spice, saffron, is the stamens (the male floral part) of a species of crocus. One interesting side note is that broccoli, brussel sprouts, kale and cauliflower all belong to the same family of plants which give rise to a favorite condiment – mustard. They are all members of the Crucifer family (the Brassicaceae).
From flowers, come fruit. Fruits are not all that they appear. Some fruits are made from the ovary of the plant: drupes, berries, pepo, and hesperidia; while some are made from tissues other than the ovary (pomes and accessory fruit) or even multiple fruit fused together. Some common fruits have been classified in the various categories in the following table.
|
Drupe stony center to protect seeds |
Berries ripened ovary |
Pepo covered by a thick leathery coating |
Hesperidium smelly leathery peel |
Pomes |
Accessory Fruit |
Multiple Fruit fused ovaries or other flower parts |
|
Cherry |
Eggplant |
Cucumber |
Orange |
Apples |
Strawberries |
Pineapple |
|
Peach |
Peppers |
Watermelon |
Grapefruit |
Pears |
||
|
Nectarine |
Tomatoes |
pumpkin |
Lemon |
|||
|
Walnut |
Kiwi |
Lime |
||||
|
Coconut |
Banana |
The main purpose of a fruit is to disperse seeds. Animals (birds, mammals and even reptiles) eat fruit and release their seeds later. The better the seed dispersal, the more plants produced which means more fruit (a win-win situation).
This has just been a brief overview of your local produce section. On your next visit, take your time going through the produce section and look carefully at what you are picking up. Try to figure out what category it belongs to or even try to figure out what other produce it is related to. You may begin to view the produce section in a whole new light.
Kathleen (Kate) Gardiner is currently a student at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She is currently working towards an honours degree in Marine Biology, and has already received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Manitoba in Ecology, with a specialization in Aquatic Ecology and Fisheries Management.
Before moving to Newfoundland in 2004, Kate worked at the Oak Hammock Marsh Interpretive Centre, Stonewall, Manitoba , and the Atlantic Reference Centre, St. Andrews , New Brunswick teaching children about the environment, wetlands and marine life.
Sources: http://www.wsu.edu/~wsherb/edpages/delicious/introduction
