Fruit

Today's sweet watermelon is the result of millennia of breeding and genetics; wild varieties had pale, bitter flesh. Ancient Egypt knew watermelons well: pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb held 11 baskets of seeds. The red color is lycopene, selected over thousands of years.

Artificial banana flavoring differs from today's bananas because it was developed when Gros Michel dominated markets. Panama disease pushed that cultivar off shelves in the 1950s–60s, and the Cavendish replaced it. Since the two taste different, the old artificial flavor now seems oddly 'fake.'

Wild peaches were only 25mm long with a flesh-to-pit ratio of just 3:2—essentially an almond with a thin layer of flesh. Peaches and almonds are very closely related species, and if you look closely at a peach pit, you can see it resembles an almond.

Most red grapefruit today descend from mutations born of gamma ray exposure. In a 1950s "Atoms for Peace" experiment, radioactive material was placed in a garden with plants around it. Those at the right distance mutated from pink into today's red, sweeter variety.