• FilterItOut
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    2 months ago

    To be fair to the dude, I didn’t know this either until a teacher taught by teaching us about peanuts. How many of us know much about most of the things we eat?

    • Syd@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      What do you eat that you don’t know about? Barring a lot of newer preservatives food is pretty straightforward.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        It’s one of those “you don’t know what you don’t know” things. I apparently make a lot of assumptions about the things I eat. Some examples of things I was surprised about:

        • coffee beans aren’t beans, they’re closer to cherries
        • how pineapples grow
        • avocados are apparently berries
        • what adult asparagus look like

        And so on. I’m sure there are a ton more, and I’m always excited to find something that really surprises me.

        • Syd@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Botanical classifications are always crazy. Most nuts are wild too, check out walnuts. How many things we eat that are clones of a specific plant is really curious too. Apples, avocados, citrus, bananas…

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Yeah, we have a walnut tree by my house and I scratched my head the first time trying to figure out how to make them look like what we get at the store.

            Food in general is often quite different than you expect, especially now that very few people are farmers and most just buy stuff at the grocery store.

      • FilterItOut
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        2 months ago

        Name 5 berries without looking up the definition of a berry, or the comic about it that gets posted every so often.

        • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Blue berry, raspberry, very berry, Boisen berry, strawberry, power berry, RAW BERRY! ⚡

          The difference being that they’re all berries. A scientific ovary does not a legitimate word or colloquial use make.

          The point being that most people have a pretty good idea about where a food comes from or grows since most generally come from similar areas when you factor in skin, softness, and size beyond just general knowledge.

          Considering the only real difficulty comes from legumes for most people because they can grow in the ground or above ground… It’s a bit disingenuous to start busting people out on fruit vs fruiting body debate.

          • shuzuko@midwest.social
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            2 months ago

            Strawberries, raspberries and boysenberries are not berries. They’re accessory fruit. Very berries and power berries don’t seem to be a thing, unless you’re translating them from another language incorrectly into English. You listed exactly one berry, the blueberry, proving their point that most people actually don’t know much about their food. “Colloquial use” has nothing to do with people knowing actual facts about their food, which was the matter under discussion. Further, (anecdotally because I’m at work and can’t be arsed to look it up at the moment though the studies have been done) a lot of people have no idea what kind of plant many of these things even grow on, whether tree, bush, vine, etc. They know it’s a plant. That’s about it. Ignorance about food is at an all time high and modern western society - or at least American society - is highly divorced from the act of food production.

            Here’s a short list of things that are actually berries: bananas, watermelon, cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, grapes, oranges and kiwis. Aside from accessory fruits which are not berries, there are also drupes - stone fruit such as cherries, plums, avocados, etc, which are sometimes lumped under the umbrella of berries and sometimes considered distinct.