Plants   Plants form the largest and most easily obtainable type of food, providing nutrients from all groups; carbohydrates, fats and proteins. They are also fairly easy to catch, most need no special preparation before being ready to eat and, with the exception of the poisonous few, do not fight back. Early settlers also found that quite a few could be grown to order. This discovery probably happened quite by accident, when discarded seeds from gathered edible plants began to thrive in the fertile middens and refuse heaps. All but a few of the common vegetables have been eaten since pre-history by Man, although it was not until the 16th century and the growth of wider trade links and communication that a greater variety of produce became available to any one culture. The first plants to have been brought under cultivation, some 10,000 years ago, are thought to have been the grains and legumes; the richest sources of proteins and carbohydrates in the plant world. It is believed that fruits and vegetables would have followed quite a bit later, as, although they contribute vitamins and minerals, they offer less in the way of the more filling and energy-giving carbohydrates, and so would always has been considered supplements rather than staple foodstuffs. Primitive Europeans still had quite a range to choose from. They were able to grow wheat, beans, peas, carrots, turnips, radishes and onions, and by around 3,000BC, most of the native Mediterranean food plants were already in use by the Egyptians and Sumerians. In Central America, maize, beans, avocados and tomatoes were all being grown by around 3,500BC, with the Peruvians already reliant on the potato as their staple. Asia’s earliest crops were millet, rice, wheat, banana and the coconut palm, which provided so much more than simply food. Early societies also developed a taste for flavoured foods, with the Europeans and Asians using mustard seeds and ginger, whilst the indigenous Americans started using chillies. By 2,500BC the embryonic spice trade had been established by the naturally nomadic Arab traders and in 1,200BC it was recorded that Ramses III had given offerings of huge amounts of cinnamon, a native of Ceylon, an indication of just how widespread the trade had grown. In the Classical world, the Greeks were very fond of lettuce and ate fruit at the end of their meals. Black pepper from India was in use in Europe by 500BC and very quickly became the most popular and highly prized spice in the ancient world. It flavoured staple gruels and had the added benefit of both hiding and retarding food spoilage. The Romans also loved all other spices, especially cumin, the use of which they spread further west, together with their fruits, vines and cabbages. Lines of supply were, naturally, weakened after the fall of the Empire with interest being rekindled after the visit of Haroun al-Raschid, the Caliph of Islam immortalized in 1001 Nights, to the Emperor Charlemagne in around 800AD. In ancient Rome, vegetables were regarded as hors d’oeuvres with fruit as a dessert, and like the Greeks, who provided most of their cooks, they too served lettuce both at the beginning and end of the meal, as they believed that the leaves would enable them to drink more wine without ill-effect. By the beginning of the Christian era, the earliest form of genetic engineering, grafting, had been well-developed by both the Greeks and the Romans. The Romans, through a combination of discovery and cultivation, developed 25 varieties of apple and 38 of pears. They also refined the grafting method for the propagation of olive trees, still in use today, leading to most of the trees being clones and virtually identical to those grown by the ancients. The Renaissance brought the so-called ‘Colombian Exchange’, bringing a veritable cornucopia of exotic, new plant foods: Maize, common bean, squash, tomato, hot and sweet peppers, potato, groundnut, avocado and the pineapple. The mis-named ‘French’ bean was an immediate success, but outside Italy, where they have an eye for a good thing, the tomato was grown purely for ornament and corn and the potato soon became cheap staple crops for the poor masses. The Exchange was two-way and by the end of the 16th century sugar cane and East Indian spices were being successfully cultivated in the new plantations in the West Indies. The 17th and 18th centuries then saw a further development, caused by the setting up of these colonial estates. Watermelon, okra and black-eyed peas spread to both the Americas and Europe, carried by the slave trade from Africa to the colonies. By the 18th century a novelty appeared; the salad became fashionable. French food hygienists recommended eating fruit at the start of a meal and salad at the end, reasoning that the salad would moisten and refresh the stomach, encourage sleep, enlarge the appetite, temper the ‘ardors of Venus’ and appease the thirst. And to think, the Romans and Greeks did exactly the same thing for the less romantic reason of being able to drink more. The word fruit is derived from the Latin word frui, meaning to enjoy or delight in and originally meant any food plant, although it gradually came to mean just the edible layer of flesh which surrounds seeds. Fruit phrases entered the language, almost always being associated with pleasure or beauty, with the rare exceptions, of course, such as the raspberry and the lemon. Perhaps one of the reasons for this positive view of fruit is that they tend to be sweeter and generally have a higher sugar content: 15% on average, for temperate zone fruits, up to 60% in the tropics, with the lemon coming in at just 1%. In the 18th century, botanists specified that a fruit is the organ derived from the ovary and surrounding the seeds. Around the same time, vegetable, from the Latin vegere meaning to enliven, came to be used for plant foods eaten as an accompaniment to a meal, as opposed to its original meaning of simply a plant. In contrast to the more romantic phraseology linked with fruits, however, the poor old vegetables became linked in speech with boring, stupid or dull associations, with perhaps just the carrot coming out best, being used to illustrate a reward. The issue of what constitutes vegetable or plant, however, still raged on. Lots of plant foods labeled as vegetables are technically fruit: green beans, aubergines, cucumbers, marrows and sweetcorn have been so defined by common usage. On the tomato debate, no less a body than the U.S. Supreme Court officially designated the fruit to be a vegetable when, in a case at the end of the 19th century, a New York produce importer lost his battle with the Customs authorities. He argued that, as a fruit, the tomato was not subject to import duty. However, the Court ruled against him on the grounds of linguistic custom, citing that tomatoes “....are usually served at dinner in, with or after the soup, fish or meat, which constitute the principle part of the repast, and not, like fruit, generally as dessert.”