[HN Gopher] How the lemon was invented (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
How the lemon was invented (2018)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 149 points
Date : 2023-05-26 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.trueorbetter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.trueorbetter.com)
| MoSattler wrote:
| I've recently been delving deeper into our food ecosystem and
| have realized that the notion of consuming "natural" food, in its
| strictest definition, seems quite untenable. It's fascinating to
| note that all meat - be it chicken, beef, or pork - are all
| outcomes of intensive human-driven breeding and domestication
| processes.
|
| A similar scenario extends to the realm of fruits, vegetables and
| even grains, where the majority of what we consume today are far-
| removed variants of their wild counterparts, owing to selective
| breeding over centuries. Essentially, the food items that
| constitute our regular diets wouldn't exist in a truly untouched,
| natural environment.
|
| Edit: I'm not saying that this is bad, just that it's
| interesting.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is correct. If you wanted only food unaffected by humans
| you'd need to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle which could
| probably only support something like 1% of the world's current
| population.
|
| But on the other hand, why consider domestic/bred species as
| "unnatural"? We exist in a symbiotic relationship with them,
| and there are symbiotic relationships all over nature.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| Breeding to kill and eat is not what symbiotic means.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think the writer means human influenced evolution in
| domesticated animals (which may of may not for slaughter
| specifically)
| Karellen wrote:
| > the notion of consuming "natural" food, in its strictest
| definition, seems quite untenable.
|
| If not strictly natural foods, then what? I can't stand
| supernatural foods - the ectoplasm really doesn't agree with
| me. I'd like to try preternatural foods, but I've never been
| able to find a genuinely miraculous grower or farm to get them
| from.
| Giorgi wrote:
| Not to drive into offtopic here, but it always baffled me how
| can humans look at results of hybrids, like a mule, a lemon, or
| at breeding and still claim evolution is not real.
| a_c wrote:
| A related idea is that, the existence of certain species is
| purely because of human consumption. They wouldn't exist in the
| current form if we stopped eating them completely.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Well, that's most animals, Right?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, yes. We domesticated everything and moved it around the
| world to optimal growing locations. Thus enabling is to have
| such a large number of humans. "Back to" movements have a
| tendency towards accidental mass famine.
| MoSattler wrote:
| We didn't just move species around, we essentially created
| new ones that exist solely under our care.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| this is why I try to practice pescetarianism. re gp's beef,
| chicken, pork: compare these animals to those they likely
| devolved from - dairy cattle from gazelles, antelope;
| poultry from cassowaries, ostriches; farm pigs from wild
| boar.. there is barely any resemblance left between these
| animals, having traded through inbreeding agility,
| physique, diet and genetic diversity for meat per kg per
| sqft per feed and docility. fish are the only remaining
| palatable animals most unfucked by humans
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Does it matter to your body if you eat meat from a water
| buffalo, or from a frog, or from a whale?
|
| Not that much. You can eat almost any animal. You can
| even eat insects.
|
| So why would it matter that a modern chicjen is different
| that it's ancestor? Assuming it has space to run around
| and is not factory farmed, it wouldn't matter.
| TylerE wrote:
| People eat insects all the time. What do you Think crab,
| shrimp, and lobsters are?
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > dairy cattle
|
| Cattle are an older species than humans.
|
| > fish are the only remaining palatable animals most
| unfucked by humans
|
| Hate to break it to you, but a non-insignificant portion
| of store bought fish was cultivated / farmed.
| hooverd wrote:
| Eh, we could probably do with less corn-syrup water.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Sure, but this is also the nirvana fallacy; just because the
| food available to you isn't 100% perfectly "natural" doesn't
| mean that it's bad/wrong or that you shouldn't strive to eat as
| natural as possible anyways.
| Veen wrote:
| But why? Your body doesn't care if the nutrients it gets are
| from naturally grown animals and plants or from a lab or
| factory, provided they are the right nutrients in the right
| quantities. It all gets broken down to its constituent
| components anyway.
| mahogany wrote:
| > provided they are the right nutrients in the right
| quantities
|
| But isn't that the tricky part: how do you figure out what
| is "right"? If you eat synthesized sugar and vitamin C in
| place of an orange, is it really the same thing? Perhaps
| the fiber or some other minerals in the orange affect how
| your body processes and digests the nutrients.
|
| Nutrition is pretty complex and until we know what "right"
| is, I'd think it's _generally_ a safer bet to stick with
| foods that we've been eating for hundreds or thousands of
| years, rather than recently devised nutritive cocktails.
| MoSattler wrote:
| > to stick with foods that we've been eating for hundreds
| or thousands of years
|
| Most modern foods (including unprocessed meat and plants)
| have only been around for a few hundred years or so.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I think he is concerned about revolutionary change, i.e.
| processed food and artificial suppliments. Bread that is
| not actually bread.
|
| Not evolutionary change - a. different variery of wheat
| in your bread.
| mahogany wrote:
| I'd take a few hundred over a few. My concern, as another
| commenter suggested, is mostly around radical changes
| without any longevity in testing or understanding. Even
| though a lot of our "natural" foods were created via
| artificial selection, it's a process that happened over
| many generations. When it comes to food and nutrition, my
| gut tells me to _generally_ prefer slow over fast.
|
| Personally I also think there is a big difference between
| selective breeding, and distilling foods into constituent
| parts in order to recombine in various ways. Maybe I'm
| overly paranoid, but I don't fully trust humans to
| understand and play that part of nature just yet.
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| That's their point, that we should probably not be eating
| "modern foods".
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Actually there is reason to not prefer foods that we have
| evolved with because we may have evolved short term trade
| offs for reproduction that happen to be bad for us long
| term.
|
| Classic example being how evolving with meat doesn't make
| saturated fat good for us in the long term. And, further,
| replacing it with modern unsaturated fats (like canola
| oil) improves health outcomes. Your heuristic of "we've
| eaten it for a long time so it must be better" doesn't
| capture that.
|
| Frankly, it seems inevitable that the optimal diet (one
| that maximizes health through all stages of life) will be
| a modern artificial one since it seems at its root just a
| technological problem. But we certainly aren't there yet
| where we can replace an orange with a synthetic orange
| pill. That is an interesting world to ponder though.
| MoSattler wrote:
| Absolutely. But it's important to note that our bodies have
| evolved over millions of years to consume naturally
| occurring foods. Now, as we've started to create and
| consume foods with characteristics unfamiliar to our
| evolutionary history, such as highly processed foods, it's
| evident that this can indeed cause problems.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I think that's debatable! Sure, some foods with a lot of
| additives are problematic, but so is lots of red meat.
| Plus there's loads of other ways in which we've digressed
| from what we've evolved to be used to. Like sleeping on
| mattresses. Its reasonable to use "natural" as a weak
| guiding factor, but not for it to override current
| scientific understanding.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Absolutely. But it's important to note that our bodies
| have evolved over millions of years to consume naturally
| occurring foods. Now, as we've started to create and
| consume foods with characteristics unfamiliar to our
| evolutionary history, such as highly processed foods,
| it's evident that this can indeed cause problems.
|
| I think the original point is that virtually everything
| we eat has "characteristics unfamiliar to our
| evolutionary history" because the animals and plants we
| eat have been bred for various characteristics so
| extensively, so simply avoiding "highly processed foods"
| doesn't meant that we're eating the types or quantities
| of foods that humans would have for almost our entire
| existence
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Modern sourdough made of modern wheat is not very
| different to sourdough that was eaten in ancient Egypt.
|
| But nobody evolved to eat large quantities of deep fried
| chicken.
| hnfong wrote:
| It really depends.
|
| Did your ancestors really eat sourdough for thousands of
| years in ancient Egypt, or were they hunters or fishermen
| until more recent times? Agriculture was common but there
| are societies that don't depend on agriculture, even
| today.
| [deleted]
| roflyear wrote:
| "It could be better" is not the nirvana fallacy.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Sure, but this is also the nirvana fallacy; just because
| the food available to you isn't 100% perfectly "natural"
| doesn't mean that it's bad/wrong or that you shouldn't strive
| to eat as natural as possible anyways.
|
| I think the point is that our conception of which foods are
| the most "natural" isn't really coherent in the first place.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I'm just surprised that all those citrus fruit could be
| interbred. I knew about brassica, but afaik that was the reverse
| process -- selecting for features in a common ancestor, like how
| all the myriad breeds of dogs come from far-less-diverse wolves.
| In this case, we're mashing up a bunch of different plants with
| their own lineages.
| spott wrote:
| Citrus taxonomy is fascinating. Of all the citrus that we have,
| there are only three "natural" plants: the mandarin, pomelo and
| citron. Everything else is some cross between these:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_taxonomy, in particular,
| this graphic:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_taxonomy#/media/File:Ci...
| mc32 wrote:
| Where do kumquats fit? And where are the "Lisbon" lemons that
| are so popular?
| kibwen wrote:
| On the topic of produce taxonomy: cauliflower, broccoli,
| cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, and kohlrabi are all just
| cultivars (selectively bred) from Brassica oleracea (wild
| mustard/wild cabbage).
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Don't forget about cauliflower, lettuce, celery, collards,
| gai lan and bok choi. I'm very much impressed with the
| horticultural diversity of this single species of plant. Also
| of interest are closely related mustard species and their
| varieties.
| pavlov wrote:
| Also feels like a competition for how many different
| spellings English can borrow for the same etymology (cauli,
| coli, kale, kohl in these words, and additionally there's
| also "cole" in coleslaw at least).
| standardly wrote:
| E. coli as well. It was sold with the lettuce there for a
| while.
| blowski wrote:
| I had to check whether you were joking. According to
| Wikipedia, E. coli is named after "bacteria found in the
| colon", whereas the "cole" bit of cauliflower comes from
| the Latin for stalk.
| standardly wrote:
| Nope. Cauliflower is latin for colon flower. It's because
| of the taste.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| Good bot
| tootie wrote:
| On the flip side, trees are not a specific taxa at all.
| Trees are the convergent evolution of multiple unrelated
| genera.
| qup wrote:
| Nice, I would not have noticed this save you pointing it
| out.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Gardeners are intimately familiar because it makes it a pain
| to rotate brassicas. So many veggies are in this family!
| masswerk wrote:
| In German, lemons are still citrons _(Zitronen),_ while
| _Limone_ applies to limes only and there is no such thing as a
| distinct concept of a lemon (which may or may not explain the
| fame of German engineering ;-) ).
| ginko wrote:
| Limes are called Limette in German. Limone refers to lemons
| in general although it's seldomly used.
|
| (Guess there might be regional differences to the use though)
| masswerk wrote:
| Yes, where I come from, _Limette_ has been the traditional
| name, but it has been mostly replaced by "Limone", when it
| comes to supermarkets, etc. I guess, these are pretty much
| interchangeable now.
| samstave wrote:
| Funny how we call bad cars "lemons" and there is a car called
| 'Citron'
| zabzonk wrote:
| presumably you mean "citroen"? in which case this is from
| the companies' founder's surname, and is french, and is not
| the name of a car but of a brand.
| samstave wrote:
| Ah, I was wrong. Thank you/
| dmurray wrote:
| Yes, and Mr Citroen was named after the fruit. Or more
| precisely, his grandfather, a grocer, was named after it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Citro%C3%ABn
| bradrn wrote:
| > Of all the citrus that we have, there are only three
| "natural" plants: the mandarin, pomelo and citron.
|
| Well, not quite... there's a bunch of other, more niche
| _Citrus_ species too. For instance, here in Australia you might
| see finger limes ( _Citrus australasica_ ) now and again. But
| it's true that all the most widespread citruses are hybrids of
| those three.
| user070223 wrote:
| That What I remember from this excellent documentary about
| citrus[0].
|
| I would also plug "Weird explorer" playlist on citrus[1]. His
| youtube channel where he tries to cover as much fruits as he
| can(his estimate is around 1% of all fruits)
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkMKJCvJKBk
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diy5s8_gNYM&list=PLvGFkMr
| O1Z...
| samstave wrote:
| Pomelo, if one hasnt had it, is AMAZING (if you like citrus)
|
| but mostly for thgose who like pulp. The corpuscles in pomelo
| are huge - and its super delicious.
|
| Highly recommend (its basically a gigantic 'orange' with its
| own flavor.
| 13of40 wrote:
| And much like a pomegranate or a crab, half the experience
| is taking it apart.
| User23 wrote:
| My local grocery store had them for a few weeks but doesn't
| stock them anymore. A shame, because they are delicious.
| vram22 wrote:
| Is it somewhat like grapefruit then? Never eaten a pomelo.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Much less bitter than a grapefruit. It's a sweet,
| delicious fruit.
| the_af wrote:
| It's the same fruit, "pomelo" in Spanish is "grapefruit"
| in English.
|
| edit: ok, according to Wikipedia, "pomelo" is an ancestor
| of grapefruit. But in Spanish, "pomelo" _is_ grapefruit.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Nah, pomelo is like 2x larger, its skin is as thick as a
| picky, and has no bitterness in its tsate
| the_af wrote:
| Right. I was confused because in Spanish "pomelo" means
| grapefruit.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I thought this too until I was corrected by a Cuban
| person. In (her) Spanish pomelo means pomelo and toronja
| means grapefruit.
|
| Now there is definitely room for more than one of us to
| be right but I thought I should mention it.
| the_af wrote:
| Ah, yes: to be clear, different Spanish(es) have
| different words for things. Some differences are
| hilarious, such as the word for "to pick up" in Spain
| ("coger") meaning "to fuck" in Argentinian Spanish.
|
| In Argentinian Spanish, "pomelo" is 100% "grapefruit".
| I'm sure of this: I'm Argentinian.
|
| But yes, it's likely that we are both right and in Cuba
| this isn't the case!
| seabrookmx wrote:
| They're a bit finicky though. The ones I find in the
| grocery store are often quite dried out (overripe I
| guess?).
|
| If you get a juicy one though they really are amazing.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| this is _mostly_ true. There are a few citrus varieties that
| until recently werent widely commercially cultivated. A
| prominent one is the cumquat, and there are a couple of native
| Australian citrus species that are now beginning to be
| cultivated that are not cultivars of the 3 core citrus species.
| sowbug wrote:
| I always thought the word "pomelo" was a portmanteau like
| tangelo or pluot. Turns out it's the OG. TIL.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| OG=original? TIL=Today I learned?
| westmeal wrote:
| Original Gangster Today I Learned
| vineyardmike wrote:
| "OG=Original gangster" has morphed to just mean original
| now
| [deleted]
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Original Gangsta: the person who started the gang.
| jxf wrote:
| Highly recommend calamansi if you've never tried it before.
| It's very prevalent in Phillipine cuisine; I first came across
| it as a sorbet flavor and I'm absolutely hooked on them now.
| They're a sort of super-acidic version of a cross between an
| orange and a lime.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| This is fascinating! I recently learned that not only can
| grapefruit mess with medications, but also other citrus-
| adjacent things like bergamot oil (earl grey tea). This
| taxonomy makes a lot of sense.
| samstave wrote:
| My grandmother couldnt eat any grapefruit due to he
| medications, this was a problem because for ~50 years, a
| grapefruit was her daily breakfast with some salt and sugar
| sprinkled on top.
|
| To this day - I LOVE grapefruit in all forms... it sucks to
| think that there may be a time in the future where I cant eat
| it.
| devilbunny wrote:
| It's generally not a problem as long as you eat exactly the
| same amount of grapefruit every day. You just have to
| adjust the dosing to suit.
|
| It's a lot easier to say "don't eat grapefruit" than it is
| to explain that "eat exactly the same amount every day" is
| not a lighthearted joke.
| tzs wrote:
| Wouldn't you also have have the grapefruit at about the
| same time everyday, and take the affected drugs at the
| same time everyday?
|
| From what I've read there are two ways grapefruit
| interferes with medication.
|
| 1. For some drugs, such as statins, those drugs are
| broken down by certain enzymes. Grapefruit interferes
| with those enzymes, resulting in more of the drug
| circulating in your body. In effect it is as if you took
| a larger does of the drug.
|
| 2. For some drugs, fexofenadine is a common example,
| those drugs rely on certain transporters that move the
| drug into cells. Grapefruit interferes with those
| transporters, resulting in less of the drug reaching
| cells. In effect it is as if you took a smaller dose of
| the drug.
|
| It sounds like this would be sensitive to timing.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Or more of it reaching the cells.
|
| It's complex, and yes, you would have to eat the same
| amount every day at the same time as you take the drug to
| be sure.
|
| As I said, it's a lot easier to say "don't eat it".
|
| I am a doctor. Don't ask a doctor. Ask a small-store (NOT
| CVS or Walgreens, they don't have the time) pharmacist
| and tell them they can get back to you later with the
| answer.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| That's an unsourced assertion with potentially serious
| medical implications if you happen to be wrong. Do you
| have anything to back it up?
| devilbunny wrote:
| I'm a practicing anesthesiologist whose wife is also a
| physician. I'm sure I can drag up a boatload of
| references if you're genuinely curious, but the short
| version is that almost anything can be adjusted for if
| you do it every day. If you're on warfarin for
| anticoagulation, eating vitamin K-rich foods will affect
| that. So it's not that eating spinach is forbidden; it's
| that you have to eat the same amount every day or very,
| very little ever.
|
| I mean, we _do_ give drugs that have primarily renal
| excretion to people with nonfuctioning kidneys. After we
| consult a pharmacist, of course.
|
| And I have no control over my patients' behaviors,
| because I don't meet them until the day of surgery. I
| already have to take them as they are. I might delay or
| cancel a case if someone isn't optimized, but sometimes
| "really bad" is as good as they will ever be.
| piceas wrote:
| I believe "just adjust the dosing to suit" is the tricky
| part.
|
| One source wisely suggests asking your doctor.
|
| https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-
| preventi...
|
| Another has big words that needs a bit more time to
| digest.
|
| Grapefruit juice-drug interactions https://bpspubs.online
| library.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1...
| zanderz wrote:
| The name "grapefruit" always seemed a little puzzling when
| compared with grapes, and it seems nobody is quite sure how
| the name got started, only that it is from Barbados. One
| interesting theory is that it is named after the "sea grape",
| the only kind that grew in that time and place, which has a
| bitter taste.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/grapefruit-history-
| and...
| Julesman wrote:
| Wait, who still says Burma?
| [deleted]
| alex_smart wrote:
| So, we just posting from r/popular now? Wtf?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| When you begin to interrogate the origins and history of everyday
| things, you'll quickly notice how "New" and tailored to extremely
| modern humanity it is.
|
| Broccoli for example is only about 2000 years old via an
| aggressive selective breeding of mustard/brassica, and no modern
| grain genetics are more than a few thousand years old with the
| last known distinct genetics being only 12000 years old.
|
| The Anthropocene is everywhere you look when you start really
| looking
| darkwater wrote:
| But then people scream "GMOs are not natural!"
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| People care about GMOs because of corporate control inherent
| in the concept, not because it's "engineering". If regular
| people could make GMO crops in their back yard then nobody
| would have a problem with it.
| jrajav wrote:
| That's an especially nuanced take, to the point that it's
| the first time I've even encountered it. Nearly everyone
| I've met against GMOs seems to think the problem is that
| they're creating some kind of mutant plant that lacks
| "natural" elements, and will surely give us cancer. Of
| course there's anti-corporate sentiment but something is
| lost in the telephone game for many.
| jandrese wrote:
| Certainly you've heard complaints about "terminator"
| seeds through? That is just one aspect of the fight
| against corporate GMO practices.
| darkwater wrote:
| And what about non-GMO seeds that bear sterile fruits?
| (i.e. watermelons or grape with no seeds, the kids love
| them!)
| jandrese wrote:
| They are propagated via cuttings. Nobody is sending the
| cops to burn down your fields for taking some grapevine
| cuttings.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Strictly speaking, those are genetically modified -- just a
| lot slower -- and through selection, not CRISPR
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| basically patentability of food is a huge problem, I do not
| think you should be allowed to use state violence to
| prevent someone from growing sustenance
| kibwen wrote:
| It's fun to refer to selective breeding as "artisanal genetic
| engineering".
| darkwater wrote:
| It's fun but it's also true
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| It's pretty nuts to look at _Teosinte_ , the grass that was
| bred into corn/maize, and seeing how it compares to modern
| giant hulking ears of corn that we use for everything from
| fueling cars to sugaring drinks.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I love that broccoli, cabbage, collard greens, kale,
| cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccolini, and way more are all
| the same plant.
|
| It's like how poodles, corgis, Great Danes, and dachshunds are
| all just dogs.
|
| It blows a lot of people's minds when I tell them.
| blakesterz wrote:
| Gastropod has a great episode if you're into this kind of thing:
|
| https://gastropod.com/museums-mafia-secret-history-citrus/
| "A slice of lime in your cocktail, a lunchbox clementine, or a
| glass of OJ at breakfast: citrus is so common today that most of
| us have at least one lurking on the kitchen counter or in the
| back of the fridge. But don't be fooled: not only were these
| fruits so precious that they inspired both museums and the Mafia,
| they are also under attack by an incurable immune disease that is
| decimating citrus harvests around the world. Join us on a
| historical and scientific adventure, starting with a visit to the
| ark of citrus--a magical grove in California that contains
| hundreds of varieties you've never heard of, from the rose-
| scented yellow goo of a bael fruit to the Pop Rocks-sensation of
| a caviar lime. You'll see that lemon you're about to squeeze in a
| whole new light."
| lordnacho wrote:
| Regarding scurvy, I read an essay that said the cure actually
| needed to be re-discovered. Someone had decided to load the ships
| with a related citrus fruit that had much less vitamin C in it,
| leading to doubts about the hypothesis since it meant sailors
| would get scurvy despite getting citrus. This got cleared up
| later, and IIRC later yet someone figured out the critical
| ingredient.
| emmelaich wrote:
| https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
|
| It's been submitted to HN quite a few times.
| [deleted]
| Pxtl wrote:
| Aside: you can still get Rose's Lime Juice, which is really a
| cordial. It's cornsyrup heavy but still is a very nice mixer. Mix
| with gin for a gimlet, or with club soda for a fun soft drink for
| kids.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Flashback, my grandad used to drink lager and lime! Rose's lime
| juice is like sausage rolls and arctic roll. Iconic.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China
| or Burma. (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar.
| I'll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to
| fruit.)
|
| The Myanese (or Burmese if you prefer) have been calling it
| Myanmar in English since 1989 - I think just about everyone uses
| that except the US government nowadays don't they?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Myanmar
| titanomachy wrote:
| Really interesting! From that article:
|
| "In the Myanmar language, Burma is known as Myanmar Pyi
| (m[?]n[?]maap[?]nny[?]). Myanmar Pyi is the written, literary
| name of the country, while Bama is the spoken name of the
| country. Burmese... has different levels of register, with
| sharp differences between literary and spoken language."
|
| English doesn't have such distinctions, so that partly explains
| why we get so confused about the name.
| tgv wrote:
| How would you know it's a cross-breed and not some
| spontaneous/random mutation?
| KevinChen6 wrote:
| Fruit (ripe fruit) tastes delicious because it needs to be
| eaten by animals, and then the seeds can walk around with the
| animal's feces, which helps plants reproduce, which can also be
| explained by Darwin's theory of evolution. With such a sour
| taste as lemon, no animal will like to eat it, which is likely
| to lead to the extinction of this plant. Therefore, the
| evolution of nature is unlikely to have such a thing as lemons.
| tgv wrote:
| Interesting point. But some berries are quite acid. Are they
| also bred? Or is a lemon too big for a bird?
| enticeing wrote:
| In some cases acidity will lessen after a frost or some
| other environmental condition
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Problem is that natural fruits as found in nature unmodified
| by humans are almost always very sour.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I think I used to live at a place with a citron tree. I always
| thought they were lemons, but the pith was always much thicker
| and they tasted so much better than store bought lemons.
| Sometimes a hint of sweetness in them! I've always wanted to try
| a real citron to compare, but I don't know where I can even get
| them.
| oniony wrote:
| They're taking the pith: the citron's skin looks about the same
| thickness as the lemon's.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| There is a fruit in Iran called Narang which looks like an orange
| but is sour. It has tons of seeds. It might be the same thing as
| the Seville orange. It's great on fish.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| That is interesting, because the Spanish word for "orange" is
| _naranja_ (both the color and the fruit).
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| This word is a clear descendent in all indoeuropean languages
| (and as a loan word in many others including Arabic) for the
| fruit and often for the color, which is named after the
| fruit, not the other way around. "Orange" the word is also
| derived from the root of the word "naranj".
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| Looks like it came from an Arabic word, based on a Persian
| word, based on a Sanskrit word. Not too surprising given
| Iberia was occupied by Muslim peoples for a while.
|
| I was curious because I swear I've heard somewhere that the
| English word for the fruit is where the color gets the name,
| though I could be making that up, and was curious if that
| originated in other languages.
| justincormack wrote:
| The English word was a norange before switching to an
| orange, so it was naranja too pretty much.
| nemetroid wrote:
| > In most languages of Europe, citron is the word for lemon,
| deriving from the Latin word citrus. This can cause some
| confusion, since the citron and the lemon are two different
| fruits. Fortunately for English speakers, we use different words
| for them and thus have an easier time keeping them straight in
| our heads.
|
| I... what? Other languages use different words for the different
| fruits, too.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Following up that mention of Rose's Lime Juice:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose%27s_lime_juice
|
| > The preservation of the fruit juice was usually done through
| the addition of 15% rum.
|
| So lime, rum, presumably also water? That's almost a mojito right
| there.
| Swizec wrote:
| > who patented a product called Rose's Lime Juice. This worked as
| well as lemons, and the Royal Navy mandated that the product be
| issued to all ships
|
| Limes _did not_ work to prevent scurvy. Steam ships just happen
| to be fast enough that nobody noticed. This is why everyone in
| Scott's polar expedition got scurvy - limes didnt work, but they
| thought they would.
|
| https://timharford.com/2022/08/cautionary-tales-south-pole-r...
| maxk42 wrote:
| Wrong. Limes _do_ prevent scurvy. However the British Navy at
| that time failed to distinguish between limes and key limes,
| believing them to be the same fruit. Key limes have very little
| ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and they were further processed and
| stored in a way that eliminated what little vitamin C they had.
| zokier wrote:
| > Limes do prevent scurvy. However the British Navy at that
| time failed to distinguish between limes and key limes,
| believing them to be the same fruit. Key limes have very
| little ascorbic acid (vitamin C)
|
| There is no single fruit called just "lime", its a category
| of fruits which includes key limes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(fruit)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| For more details: Wu et al. 2018, "Genomics of the origin and
| evolution of Citrus"
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25447
|
| > "To investigate the genetic diversity and evolutionary history
| of citrus, we analysed the genomes of 58 citrus accessions and
| two outgroup genera (Poncirus and Severinia) that were sequenced
| to high coverage, including recently published sequences as well
| as 30 new genome sequences described here... We identified ten
| progenitor citrus species by combining diversity analysis,
| multidimensional scaling and chloroplast genome phylogeny."
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| The author states that lemons were a human invention, which to me
| sounds like humans deliberately bred them this way. I'd find it
| more likely that the cross happened through open pollination,
| which is also true of many recent citrus that people grow. Humans
| were in the loop, but "human invention" goes a bit far.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| counterexample: corn.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| We can list off citrus that came from breeding programs as
| well as verified openly pollinated varieties. I'm not sure
| how this improves the discussion, though.
| tonymillion wrote:
| Dogs
| dcanelhas wrote:
| Interesting. Lemons are called "Limao Arabe" in Brazil (Limao
| being the word for Lime). Perhaps that was due to Columbus then?
| durron wrote:
| The article (appropriately) glosses over a fun butterfly effect.
| The large export of lemons to Britain is a core reason for the
| existence of the Italian mafia.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831830-600-why-the-...
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Geez, we're never going to run out of things we can blame on
| the British Empire, are we?
|
| (this is a joke. I'm joking. I think)
|
| Seriously though, I wish that wasn't paywalled. Sounds like a
| really interesting bit of story.
| haha69 wrote:
| Huh... so life doesn't give you lemons [1]... you make them...?
|
| [1] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_life_gives_you_lemons%2C_...
| kibwen wrote:
| "When a thirsty time traveler gives you the idea for lemonade,
| make lemons."
| spiritplumber wrote:
| I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that
| burns your house down!
| pfdietz wrote:
| Limonene has been investigated as a rocket fuel. The
| unsaturated bonds add a bit of extra energy compared to
| kerosene.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Came here for the invention of the _lemon problem_ but was
| disappointed it is about _real_ lemons
| psychphysic wrote:
| Life didn't give us lemons we gave lemons life!
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