Strange History Shorts: Semen is the Crack Cocaine of the Fly World and other odd food facts

Welcome to strange history shorts. Today we're going to be talking about food.

In eighteen ninety three, the Supreme Court had to rule whether tomatoes were fruit

or a vegetable. This happened not long after people finally decided that tomatoes weren't

poisonous, and that was a belief that lasted hundreds of years. Owing largely

to their botanical relationship to Mandrake's and deadly nightshade, people used to think potatoes

cause syphilis and leprosy. This was chiefly because of their resemblance to the impacted

body parts of the afflicted. Now, of course, potatoes are America's favorite

vegetable, largely thanks to French fries. Tomatoes come in second place, owing

largely to their use and frozen pizza and canned tomato sauce. Vanilla isn't very

vanilla. While vanilla has unfortunately become a synonym for ordinary, it's really anything

but for starters. It's the only edible fruit to come from orchids, even

though that the largest family of flowers. Vanilla gets its name from Spanish gnquistadors,

who named it after the Spanish word for vagina. It has to be

pollinated by hand using a technique developed by an enslaved twelve year old named Edmund

Albius, and it's the world's second most expensive spice behind saffron. The first

breakfast cereals were intentionally bland. Ready to eat breakfast cereals were created in the

eighteen hundreds by religious health reformers who believes sugar and spices were sinful and that

consuming them incited bodily temptation, leading to such sexual urges as chronic masturbation and

adultery, and ultimately resulting an internal damnation. So for all you lucky charm

lovers out there, take note. Our affinity for certain foods begins in the

womb. Researchers suggest that many of our adult food preferences are influenced by flavors

like vanilla present in breast milk and amniotic fluid, which absorbed flavors and odors

in the parent's diet, while other food preferences, such as people's polarized responses

to cilantro, go back even earlier to the genetic inheritance of specific taste receptors.

People used to believe personality, traits and intellect were passed on through breast

milk. As a result, early wet nurses were screened for things like breast

shape, manners, and vices such as day sleeping and gambling addiction to ensure

their milk was child friendly. An entire ear of ancient corn used to be

about the size of a cigarette. Over thousands of years, corn was selectively

bred from a nearly inedible weed into the modern staple many cultures depend on.

Now, there is a decent chance that the honey in your cupboard comes from

lawn weeds or poison ivy, and that's okay. Apparently cinnamon, it was

said, came from a giant bird's nest and had to be transported using rafts

without oars on a treacherous journey that took five years and was powered by courage

alone. We're gonna have to cover that time in another podcast that sounds interesting.

Fidel Castro was obsessed with American dairy. He spent decades funding the genetic

manipulation of a dairy supercow named ubre blanca, which means white utter. She

produced four times the milk of American cows and was assigned a security detail in

an air conditioned stable, and her funeral was held with military honors and a

life size marble statue after her death. No one wanted to eat Patagonian toothfish

until they were rebranded as Chilian sea bass in nineteen ninety four. Now they

sell for thirty dollars a pound at Whole Foods. Spice traders used to make

up stories about the exotic origins of spices so they could sell more for money.

Cinnamon, it said what came from giant bird's nest and had to be

transported using rafts without orison treacher's journeys that took five years and was powered by

courage alone. Black pepper was said to grow in forest guarded by serpents that

had to be scared way by setting the trees on fire, which explained why

the black pepper pods were the color of ashes. The adige you'll catch more

flies with honey isn't really true. Rather, catching flies depends on a host

of complex variables, including the age, gender, sex, drive, mating

status, thirst, and stress level of each fly, as well as the

concentration of the vinegar, the time of day, and the season. Even

then, some researchers suggests you'll catch more flies with beer or human semen with

one scientist calling semen the crack cocaine of the fly world. This has been

another episode of Strange History shorts

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