Vegetable Basics

The term vegetables is applied to the many varieties of garden plants used for food. Though the importance of vegetables as a food has varied across the ages and from one culture to another, vegetables, along with rice, have long served as a staple of the human diet.

Today, vegetables are consumed mainly as an accompaniment to main courses in most of the Western Hemisphere, although they continue to play a central role in the diet in Asia and the Middle East. In North America, the consumption of vegetables has been on the rise since the mid-1970s, largely as a result of increased public awareness of the importance of vegetables to a healthy diet. The greater diversity and availability of vegetables in the marketplace have also contributed to the increase in their consumption.

Well before the beginning of agriculture (12,000 years ago), humans were nomads who lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering. As these nomadic peoples gradually settled in certain regions, they began to keep animals and to gather wild plants for food. Exactly how human beings learned to grow food is not known, but it appears that two techniques were used. The first method involved sowing seeds, while the second consisted of producing new plants from the shoots or roots.

The most significant improvements in a number of vegetable varieties are actually recent and are largely attributable to the discovery of genetics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These discoveries have made it possible to produce new vegetable varieties with specific crop yields and qualities such as flavor, color, and so on.