Broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable native to the Mediterranean and was first cultivated during the time of the Roman Empire by the Etruscans who lived in what is now Tuscany. It’s generally used form, Calabrese broccoli (named after Calabria, Italy), is typically composed of stalks and florets, essentially a large edible flower. The vegetable first became popular in the United States in the early 1920s as Southern Italians immigrated to the country, but commercial cultivation dates back to the 1500s. Records even show that Thomas Jefferson experimented with broccoli seeds in the late 1700s.

Coconuts are the seed and fruit of the palm tree and the Swiss Army knives of the plant kingdom. In one neat package, they provide a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. Unsurprisingly, the fruit has been ubiquitously used by various cultures and researchers have discovered that the coconut was likely brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. Studies into coconut genetics even outline a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.

Currently, roughly 300 million laying hens in the United States, primarily Single-Comb White Leghorns, produce approximately 75 billion eggs a year, about 10% of the world supply. (750 billion eggs!!!) About 60% of the eggs produced are used by consumers, about 9% are used by the food-service industry, and the remaining 30% or so are turned into egg products which are used mostly by restaurants and by food manufacturers to make foods like mayonnaise and cake mixes.

Evidence of large-scale chicken consumption crops up in Europe in the first century B.C. From there, the birds’ popularity continued to soar, recently surpassing beef in terms of consumption, with Americans eating more than 80 pounds of chicken a year. In 2004, the modern chicken was honored as the first domesticated animal and bird for which a complete genome has been mapped out.