Fruits and All

Giant sloths, poison and testicles: the not-so-sweet history of your favourite healthy snacks.

Words Sophie Kalagas

Kiwifruit

These days, it brings in billions in profits for our chipper pals across the ditch, but, despite its name, the kiwifruit is no New Zealand native. Rather, the fuzzy fruit began its life as the ‘macaque peach’ in mainland China – so-called for its popularity with the local macaque monkey population. It wasn’t until 1904 that a dame by the name of Mary Isabel Fraser – principal of Whanganui Girls’ College on New Zealand’s North Island – took a trip to China to visit some local mission schools. While there, she took a liking to the tart, green fruit, and brought seeds back home to NZ, tucked away in her luggage. (Presumably border control was more relaxed back then.) They were planted in Whanganui in 1906; four years later, the vines began to fruit. Noticing a similarity in flavour, locals named the plant the ‘Chinese gooseberry’ – until they began exporting it to the US in the ’50s. At the height of the Cold War, China’s Communist connection was a marketing nightmare, so produce company Turners and Growers threw around some other options – namely ‘melonettes’ and, eventually, the ‘kiwifruit’, after the country’s flightless national bird. And so, a major horticultural industry was born, and the kiwifruit was established in the public mindset as a quintessential New Zealand product.

Apple

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but the crunchy fruit wasn’t always such an appealing snack. In their early days, apples were smaller and far more bitter than those we chomp on for morning tea – naturalist Henry David Thoreau described them as “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream”. A process of natural selection was the fruit’s saving grace. Travellers through Eastern Europe – where apples originated – picked the larger, sweeter fruit to eat, spreading their pips across the continent and north into the Baltic regions. As it became more palatable, royals latched on to the apple’s goodness: Henry VIII established a dedicated orchard growing many different varieties; Queen Victoria developed a fondness for baked apples; and Catherine the Great had Golden Pippin apples shipped over to her palace in Russia, each wrapped individually in paper made from real silver. When folks weren’t taking bites out of them, they drank apples as cider – the most valuable, accessible tipple in early America. (It was even considered healthier than water since sanitation was so poor.) Farmers rode this tangy wave through till the 1920s, when the Prohibition put a stop to cider’s demand; as a result, marketers turned their attention back to the fruit’s nutritious, health-bringing qualities and yumminess as a stand-alone snack.

Fig

The humble fig has a long and prosperous history, beginning all the way back in prehistoric times. According to fruit-loving boffins, wild figs first sprouted in Africa, West and South Asia, and around the Mediterranean Sea about 100 million years ago, meaning they may well have been scoffed by herbivorous dinosaurs. But it was humans who took the fleshy fruit from strength to strength: believed to be one of the first domesticated crops, folks in West Asia began growing fig trees long before staples like wheat or barley. In the first centuries AD, fig farms popped up throughout the Roman Empire and, supposedly, Ancient Olympians earned not gold, silver or bronze, but figs for their athletic prowess. Meanwhile, in Egypt, farmers were training monkeys to climb trees and pick the precious fruit for them. The fig held a mystical importance, you see – Egyptians believed Hathor, the goddess of joy and motherhood, would emerge from a fig tree to welcome them to heaven, so Pharaohs were buried with dried figs in their graves, ensuring a safe journey to the afterlife. While these divine qualities are questionable, there’s no denying the fig’s medicinal value – packed with fibre, vitamins and bacteria-fighting compounds, even chimpanzees have been observed self-medicating with bark and leaves from their trees.

Watermelon

According to Mark Twain, “When one has tasted watermelon, he knows what the angels eat.” But the writer may have thought differently had he noshed on a slice of the earliest fruit. A far cry from the refreshing snack we know today, the flesh of wild African watermelons was pale, hard and bitter to taste. It took centuries of selective breeding across the globe to produce a fruit folks were actually fond of eating – but they may have taken it too far. A specific variety known as the Bradford watermelon was prized for its supersweet flesh and soft, buttery rind; so much so, farmers were forced to take extra precautions to ward off sticky fingers. Some camped out with shotguns, while others randomly poisoned certain melons, like a vitamin-rich game of Russian roulette. (As you can imagine, this lost some appeal when they forgot which fruit they’d tampered with.) Another popular security measure was hooking the watermelons up to electric wires, leading bandits to a nasty shock, and in many cases, death. Perhaps that’s what Twain was referring to when he linked angels to the sticky, sweet treat – but either way, it’s worth pondering next time you nibble on some watermelon at a summer picnic.

Pineapple

The longstanding debate amongst pizza-eaters is whether pineapple makes a suitable topping (it doesn’t), but a more crucial question may be whether a pineapple-topped pizza should truly be called a ‘Hawaiian’. After all, the tropical fruit isn’t native to the US state – it’s simply the first place that pineapple was canned. A more accurate name would be the ‘South American’ (it’s not quite as catchy, sure, but more historically accurate). Eventually the pineapple found its way from South America to the Caribbean, and in 1493, explorer Christopher Columbus discovered the spiny, sweet fruit on the island of Guadeloupe. Impressed with this new exotic snack, he packed up a bundle and shipped them back to Spain. The pineapple was an instant hit, but there was a problem – it needed a tropical climate to grow. Though farmers attempted to recreate the warm, humid conditions, it took nearly two centuries to perfect. Even then, pineapples were in high demand and low supply. They became a symbol of wealth and prosperity (apparently King Charles II of England commissioned a painting of his gardener presenting him with the fruit). Too fancy to eat, pineapples were rented out as decorative pieces for dinner parties, used again and again until they began to rot. At that point, an affluent buyer would take it home to devour. But never atop a pizza with mozzarella and ham, of course.

Avocado

Next time you sit down for brunch, spare a thought for the avocado smooshed across your toast: it very nearly died out 13,000 years ago. In the Cenozoic era, mammoths, giant sloths and other prehistoric megafauna munched on avos whole, like small, buttery bar snacks – they then travelled long distances and pooped out the seeds, enabling a new crop of avocado trees to grow. When the Ice Age wiped out the colossal creatures, this could have spelled the end for avocados, too. Luckily, industrious humans stepped in (presumably forseeing the deliciously overpriced meals that lay ahead of them). Folks in Central America began to cultivate the avocado, naming it ahuacatl – translated: testicle – for its dangling, egg-shaped look. This sexual undertone extended beyond the name, as well – the fruit was considered such a potent aphrodisiac that virgin daughters were locked indoors while Aztec farmers went out to harvest. Over centuries, the avocado – which is technically a berry – was bred to have a greater ratio of flesh to pip. Though consumers were confused by the savoury fruit for some time (some even tried stewing it and serving it with custard), eventually an avocado appreciation caught on, resulting in the ‘superfood’ – and millennial housing crisis – we know today.