15 Common Foods We’ve Been Genetically Engineering For Centuries

For centuries, humans have been tinkering with nature to create the perfect food. From the earliest days of domestication, we’ve been taking wild plants and animals and making them our own. We’ve changed the sour to sweet, the wild to tame, and the unpredictable to reliable. We’ve gone from wild apples to sweet citrus fruits, from deadly almonds to delicious ones, and from wild boar to domesticated pigs.
Today, we have a vast array of fruits, vegetables, and animals that have been shaped by centuries of human intervention. From the cotton candy-tasting grapes to the millennia-old superfood avocados, from the tamed wild boar to the domesticated chickens, and from the olives of the Mediterranean to the carrots of Central Asia, we have a world of food that is the product of human ingenuity.
This list is a testament to the power of human intervention, and the amazing things we can do when we work with nature. We can make something new, something better, and something delicious. Enjoy!
Wild boar stole the show?

Deyana Stefanova Robova/Shutterstock,
Eric Isselee/Shutterstock
Citrus

Sweet success.

Olives: the original Mediterranean superfood.

Rice: tamed by humans since time immemorial.

Mangoes

Chickens used to be wild.

Defying nature: a sweet, sugary grape.

Weed

Taming the beast: one step closer to burgers and fries.

Carrots have come a long way.

Bigger, less shatter-y, and more predictable.

Avocados: a millennia-old superfood.

Apricot-Picking

