this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 114 points 4 days ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 88 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (4 children)

How? Like... literally how?

I grow kale and it looks nothing like the plant in the OP. It looks like a regular bunch of kale.

Or is this like "all 6 vegetables come from one main vegetable", kind of like how all citrus fruits comes from citron.

[–] ILikeBoobies 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

kind of like how all citrus fruits comes from citron.

This is what happened

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

No, it's cooler than that! All these vegetables are cultivars of the same species (Brassica oleracea). Citrus trees are different species with common origins.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Artificial selection!

If you think that’s amazing - look up what bananas looked like before human cultivation. Basically any fruit or vegetable you eat is the product of centuries of humans carefully selecting what seeds to save and plant.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Just like dog breeds look very distinct, but cranked up to eleven with horrible deformities. Imagine if we continued to breed chihuahuas to have bigger heads and smaller bodies until they are 90% head. Or breed a breed of hound to be smaller with increasingly bigger ears until it's 90% ears. They would still be dogs of the same species because they can procreate together.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Its exactly like that.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

🔫🌼 Always has been.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

cabbage, to be more accurate

[–] rbos 69 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

Always a relevant xkcd, isn't there

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

this meme has some truth in it, in that these six vegetables are all brassica oleracea. but, the factoid in the center of the meme is misleading: brassica oleracea can be many things but (despite brassicaceae being "the mustard and cabbage family") brassica oleracea is not typically called "wild mustard plant".

edit: toned down my refutation; i guess maybe it is sometimes 👀 but i think not really

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Tagged & linked comment. :)

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Except that it's not the wild mustard plant. It's the wild cabbage plant. Wild mustard is totally different genusv and species.

wild cabbage

wild mustard

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Srsly. What is this bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And every one fucking delicious

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 days ago (5 children)

People have some hate boner against Brussels sprouts, but damn - if you know how to prepare them, they're delicious.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Selective breeding does play a role but also how you prepare them. Just like other brassicae if you cook them for too long they start smelling bad, so you want to use high heat and relatively short cooking times.

For example. My go-to approach is to cut them into halves and pan-fry in lard. High fire. People claim it's delicious.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

I mean, things fried in lard do usually come out delicious.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Right, when I was growing up, always steamed or boiled - absolute trash. Just throw them on a pan under the broiler with some oil and salt/pepper chefs kiss

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Look, anything pan fried with butter, salt, black pepper, bacon and a little white wine is going to taste great...

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I've had this discussion before, had the "proper way" of preparing them explained to me and made them according to these instructions. Turns out, I just don't like the taste. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sliced in half and deep fried—in case anyone was wondering.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I actually prefer to eat them raw. A cup a day before sleeping. They act as sleeping pills for me

You get used to the taste and learn to enjoy it, same as with beer except they are good for you and increase hair density. It’s a real life equivalent of ent water

[–] BedSharkPal 37 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Wait, but I put mustard on my broccoli...

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago

Yo dawg, I heard you like mustard...

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Does this mean I can put mustard on things instead of eating all these vegetables?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is news to me, but I was always kind of onto cauliflower just being albino broccoli, so not too surprised there.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

We eat like 2 plants. One is brassica mentioned above.

The other one is nightshade. In the nightshade family we find tomatos, aubergine, tobacco, peppers, physalis, potatoes and of course the extremely toxic bella-donna (deadly nightshade)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Just a small correction: you missed an "a" in bella-donna (bella donna means "beautiful woman" in Italian)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

We also eat like two animals, sea insects and variants of dog

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (7 children)

To all the veggie haters:

Broccoli recipe:

  1. Fry broccoli with paprika and small pieces of meat or tofu in a pan until brown.
  2. Add water and seasonings.
  3. Steam to desired hardness.
  4. Serve with rice or couscous.

Cauliflower recipe:

  1. Make brown butter by heating up butter and adding breadcrumbs to soak it up.
  2. Serve it on enough steamed cauliflower to justify the amount of brown butter you are about to eat.
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

ancient and medieval europeans went through some shit

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

scientific name

uppercase species

not even underlined or italicized

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (11 children)

Weird how mustard (the condiment) tastes so good yet the cultivars of this particular species all taste horrible to me.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

mustard on the beat, yo

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Even the etymological family is a mess. They all backtrack to Latin caulis stalk, stem, cabbage stem; but even in closely related language varieties they might mean different plant varieties, like

  • Galician, general - col wild kale/cabbage/whatever, collards
  • Galician, south - couva~couve kale
  • Portuguese - couve kale
  • Spanish - col cabbage

...and of course people had to reborrow the word from Latin to refer to stems in general, to make the thing even messier. (e.g. PT "caule" stem)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's wild how many times that root has been reborrowed for different vegetable names

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Yeah, it’s wild how many times that root has been reborrowed for different vegetable names

The root is the same, but the stems and leaves are all different!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Animals turn into crab, plant turn outfrom cabbage

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Damn these healthy GMOs!

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