Most people are not even aware that there are many varieties of pretty much every vegetable that we eat, and that there are a whole lot of vegetables that have never found their way into the modern American diet. As late as 1900, we grew more than 300 varieties of corn in the United States, nearly 500 varieties of lettuce, more than 300 varieties of muskmelon, 400+ varieties of peas, almost 350 varieties of squash, more than 400 kinds of tomatoes, almost 300 kinds of cucumbers, nearly 550 varieties of cabbage, nearly 300 kinds of beets, and more than 550 kinds of radishes. Each of these varieties offered unique tastes and nutritional values. Many of these are extinct now. Of the more than 7,000 varieties of apples that once existed, fewer than 100 remain, and most people alive today have never tasted more than a dozen of these. Our diet has been reduced to only a few varieties of a handful of vegetables, and this is not a choice that we have made for ourselves. The vegetables that find their way into our grocery stores were not even chosen because they were the most nutritious of the bunch or the tastiest. They were chosen because they could be produced efficiently in large quantities. As family farms have been replaced by factory farms, our choices are greatly reduced. Where they exist, family farms mostly sell to a local market, which they have to arrange. Large food distributors are only going to buy from someone who can offer a large quantity. Thus, a family farm can only sell its products to a distributor if it produces the same crop that everyone else in the area is producing. As for the factory farms, it's a whole lot more cost efficient to plant a given acreage with one crop than to plant it in a variety of crops. So the corn that makes it to your market is the one (probably a hybrid, and probably genetically modified) that looks pretty and can be produced efficiently. I am looking at an heirloom seed catalog that lists only eleven varieties of corn. A notation states that: Did you know that several of the varieties of what is sold as "feed corn" or "cow corn" are actually more nutritious than the sweet corn varieties? One of the crops that my dad grew regularly as a cash crop was cow corn, as we called it. It was a light yellow, almost white, variety of corn. It was also served at our table regularly, with the sweet corn from my mom's garden reserved for Sundays, when we were likely to have guests. I preferred the cow corn.
If there were 7,000 varieties of apple still, I'd be overwhelmed. As it is, I only buy Fuji because that's the one I like best...but I haven't really tried all of them...just go by the short description of what they taste like. Don't know much about corn, not a big fan.
Ken, are you looking at Baker Creek? It has the largest collection of heirloom seeds I have ever seen and the photography is amazing. https://www.rareseeds.com/
Yeah, it's the Baker's Creek one. Not from this year, though. I was just looking to see how many might still be available. The paper copy, not online.
The first apple is thought to have been the crabapple, which has been around since prehistoric times. At some point, European crabapple trees crossbred with Asian crabapple trees, producing a different kind of apple, and all the other varieties developed from there, accidentally or by human intervention. Of the 7,000 varieties of apples that once existed, about 1,500 were grown in the United States. I don't know how many of these might be extinct today, but only about a dozen are commercially available.
Another place to get heirloom seeds and plants is on eBay. You can just search for whatever seed type (heirloom tomato, etc) and you will have all kinds of varieties to choose from. One thing that I really like about buying on ebay, is that many of the sellers are small gardeners that save seeds from their gardens, or grow extra crops just to be able to sell the seeds. A lot of these people are older Vietnam vets, who have moved out to the backcountry somewhere, and buying from them helps add to their income, as well as supports our vets by choosing them instead of a large seed company. I totally agree that we only have a few of the fruits and veggies that people can eat, and the ones we get are the ones with the shortest growing season and the longest shelf life. Plus, they are harvested and shipped to the stores when they are green, so the fruit never truly gets ripe.
It seems to me that the vegetables we have now are better flavored than the ones we ate while I was growing up. Corn, for instance. The corn I like best is Ambrosia. It is tender, sweet and juicy. Truly fit for the gods. And sweet potatoes: the Beauregard sweet potatoes, like the Ambrosia corn, is sweeter and juicier than the older varieties. Collards, the cabbage collards are much better than the old darker collards. It seems to me that people buy what tastes the best and leave behind the old varieties. Survival of the bestest, you might say.
Modern fruit and vegetables are bred for shipping ability and sweetness. Everything you named is sweeter than the heirloom varieties. Heirlooms in the North were often bred for storage ability. Actually, some flavor is lost, but the sugar content is higher in the corn and the sugar is more stable and last longer. Now the veggies are also engineered for tolerance to herbicides, so they can rely on chemicals and not cultivate.