Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, the production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bol obam here. From baby carrots to microgreens,
Speaker 1: we humans are enamored of tiny vegetables. But then we
Speaker 1: have a long history of fascination with things of diminutive scale,
Speaker 1: from Egyptian tomb artisans to modern miniacs, that is, people
Speaker 1: who make, collect or appreciate tiny versions of everyday objects.
Speaker 1: There's evidence dating back to the third millennium BC of
Speaker 1: Egyptian tombs outfitted with dinky models of livestock, boats and
Speaker 1: furniture in an effort to ensure a comfy afterlife. By
Speaker 1: the fourteen hundreds, miniature portraits had become all the rage,
Speaker 1: with painters creating images around just three inches or seven
Speaker 1: centimeters wide, and in the sixteen hundreds, German dollhouses complete
Speaker 1: with pots and pans, became popular as informative playthings, an
Speaker 1: idea that bloomed in the seventeen hundreds as wealthy English
Speaker 1: families commissioned itty bitty replicas of their own homes outfitted
Speaker 1: with itty bitty family heirlooms. Somewhere along the way, our
Speaker 1: fascination with things in miniature came to include Etsy bitsy
Speaker 1: vegetables too. The aforementioned baby carrots and microgreen's yes, along
Speaker 1: with baby corn and similarly infantilized squash, are all commonplace
Speaker 1: today everywhere, from fresh produce aisles and frozen meals to
Speaker 1: take out and fancy restaurant fair alike. So why do
Speaker 1: we love baby vegetables? Mary White, a Boston University anthropologist,
Speaker 1: said in an interview with New York Magazine in in
Speaker 1: terms of our psycho emotional relationship to tiny things, I
Speaker 1: think it relates to the way you feel when you're
Speaker 1: in a cathedral. The enormity and intricate detail of the
Speaker 1: space are all inspiring, and humans can experience a flipped
Speaker 1: version of that awe when looking at meticulously reproduced tiny things.
Speaker 1: That something can be that small is a wonder. But
Speaker 1: where do those tiny vegetables come from? It turns out
Speaker 1: a veggie packaged, sold, or served as a baby may
Speaker 1: actually be a young vegetable, or it may not. It's
Speaker 1: also entirely possible that a baby vegetable is a dwarf
Speaker 1: or hybrid version of a full sized vegetable. Take, for example,
Speaker 1: those adorable little ears of corn that show up in
Speaker 1: some of your favorite American Chinese dishes. Baby corn, also
Speaker 1: known as corn letts, truly are just baby ears of
Speaker 1: regular corn. The corn is harvested at an immature stage
Speaker 1: from nearly any variety of regular sized corn plant. Typically
Speaker 1: once an ear designated to be baby corn reaches up
Speaker 1: to four inches that's around ten centimeters in length, and
Speaker 1: it's about half an inch or a little over a
Speaker 1: centimeter in diameter. It's picked from there. It can be
Speaker 1: par cooked, in canned, pickled, or frozen, or sold fresh
Speaker 1: in local markets. Baby back choi is another young vegetable
Speaker 1: that's harvested early for its tender and mild quality. However,
Speaker 1: there are also dwarf varieties of mock baby bok choy
Speaker 1: that have a similar looking taste to their early harvested
Speaker 1: adolescent cousins. Another specially developed varietal led to the debut
Speaker 1: of baby broccoli, also commonly called broccolini in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: This baby veggie is the offspring of regular sized broccoli
Speaker 1: and guy lawn Chinese plant with similar qualities. Broccolini, like
Speaker 1: a lot of vegetable youngsters, is known for its tenderness
Speaker 1: and bite sized presentation. Size can also be determined by
Speaker 1: the way of vegetable has grown. Baby artichokes and regular
Speaker 1: size artichokes come from the same type of plant. They're
Speaker 1: even harvested at the same time. The difference in size
Speaker 1: lies in the fact that the baby version is grown
Speaker 1: in the shade, while the regular version is grown in
Speaker 1: the sun. But what about baby carrots? The name applies
Speaker 1: to two entirely different things. Some baby carrots are harvested
Speaker 1: early to create delicate, finger sized edibles, and a few
Speaker 1: varieties are genetically predisposed to dibunitive size. But some baby
Speaker 1: carrots aren't babies at all. They're chopped door whittled down
Speaker 1: from regular sized carrots. So when did growers start whittling
Speaker 1: carrots down into smooth, skinless, miniature versions of regular carrots.
Speaker 1: The idea is generally credited to a California carrot farmer
Speaker 1: named Mike Urasak, whose operation needed a way to deal
Speaker 1: with the daily loss of four hundred tons of carrots
Speaker 1: that were too misshapen to fit into the bags his
Speaker 1: company used for retail sale. Your sack experimented with peeling
Speaker 1: and shaping a few bags of crooked carrots into a
Speaker 1: baby size and sent them to a customer. A grocery
Speaker 1: chain that almost immediately demanded more. The process was later industrialized,
Speaker 1: using machines to cut, peel, grind, and polish the carrots
Speaker 1: into bite sized form. The advent of the too bite
Speaker 1: perfectly sculpted baby cut carrot grew the United States carrot
Speaker 1: consumption by leaps and bounds. In seven one year after
Speaker 1: they hit the marketplace, people were buying thirty more carrots.
Speaker 1: A decade later, the average American was eating a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventeen percent more carrots than before and estimated fourteen
Speaker 1: pounds that's six and the third kilos per year. By
Speaker 1: the two thousands, the baby carrot had come to dominate
Speaker 1: the fresh cut vegetable category. It's fairly easy to tell
Speaker 1: the difference between a carrot that's naturally small and one
Speaker 1: that's cut larger. Carrots ground down to baby carrot size
Speaker 1: are labeled baby cut, while carrots that have been harvested
Speaker 1: in their infancy are labeled baby carrots. There are about
Speaker 1: fifty different types of vegetables that are grown or imported
Speaker 1: as miniatures in the United States. Baby squash look improbably
Speaker 1: perfect in miniature. They're one or two inch that's two
Speaker 1: and a half to five centimeter round vegetables with scalloped
Speaker 1: edges and delicate green, white or yellow skin. Some are
Speaker 1: harvested so young that their embryonic flowers are still intact,
Speaker 1: decrying a gentle and conscientious picking. Microgreens, the tender, young
Speaker 1: leafy plants that often appear on salad plates, are produced
Speaker 1: year round, and baby lettuces specifically come in a number
Speaker 1: of varieties, from romaine green leaf and iceberg to the
Speaker 1: dark red hue of red royal oak leaf lettuce. Harvested early,
Speaker 1: these greens contain the same nutritional composition as their older counterparts,
Speaker 1: but are known for their tender and delicate nature. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article so That's where baby
Speaker 1: veggies come from on House to works dot Com, written
Speaker 1: by laure L Dove. Brain Stuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Klein. Four more podcasts from
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