Among foods that have survived and thrived through eons, potatoes are one of the top contenders. They are stem tubers of the plant Solanum tuberosum, which is a perennial plant in the Solanaceae family. They appear in various different shapes, colours and sizes. Boil them, mash them, roast them,...

Coco de Mer, commonly known as the sea coconut, or double coconut, Lodoicea is a monotypic genus in the palm family. The only species, Lodoicea maldivica, is endemic to the islands of Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles. The coco de mer palm has separate male and female trees, unlike the...

The Aztecs called it xocolātl (meaning "bitter water"), but it should have been called ambrosia. The Aztecs believed that cacao seeds were the gift of Quetzalcoatl, the God of wisdom, and the seeds had so much value they were used as a form of currency. Cacao has been used in Mesoamerica since...

Never has a plant fooled so many. It’s called a vegetable but is really a fruit; it was once thought to be poisonous but is enjoyed by millions; today it is mostly red, but originally it was yellow. The tomato is a native fruit of South America, specifically the Andes region of Ecuador, Bolivia...

Few vegetables are as versatile as the potato, another native of the Andes with an ancestry extending back to around 8000-5000 BCE in Peru. You can have them boiled or broiled, fried or mashed, with meat or fish. Potatoes were first introduced into Europe following the Spanish conquest of the Inca...