THE FOOD THAT ANGELS EAT

Giovanni Stanchi Dei Fiori, 1600s, compliments of Wikimedia Commons

What is more delicious than ice cold watermelon on a scorching summer day?

Mark Twain said it best in his 1894 novel, Pudd’nhead Wilson. “When one has tasted watermelons, he knows what angels eat.”

The food that angels eat has been with us for a long time. An image of a watermelon was discovered in the ancient remains of an Israeli mosaic. A 4,300-year-old painting in an Egyptian tomb included a watermelon with other sweet fruits. Giovanni Stanchi Dei Fiori, in his seventeenth century painting (above) showed what watermelons looked like in the Middle Ages.

A white watermelon?

The story of this thirst-quenching fruit (you can also call it a berry or vegetable) is delightful. Watermelon represents the best of people and nature spanning thousands of years. Seeds were shared, selective breeding utilized, farmers, physicians, and geneticists are all part of its colorful history.

Let’s go back into watermelon’s origin. Experts debated it for many years – until Israeli horticulturist, Harry Paris, came along. He put the pieces together. It took years of assembling clues from ancient Hebrew texts and literature, artifacts and artwork found in Egyptian tombs, Medieval paintings, and genetics.

Nothing stopped the determined Israeli scientist. Paris concluded that watermelon emerged from a wild desert fruit in Sudan, Africa, today known as kordofan melon. They still grow in the African desserts, “representatives of the wild ancestor of the sweet dessert watermelon.”

The melon was bitter-tasting and thick-skinned but highly useful. It could be stored for relatively long periods of time and with its high-water content, ideal for the dry season.

You know, like a 5,000-year old natural water bottle.

Paris maintained that ancient Egyptians used selective breeding to cultivate melons without the bitter taste. Mark Strauss in National Geographic, agreed, “one dominant gene was responsible for the bitter flavor so it would have been relatively easy to breed it out.”

The same gene controlled color.

Watermelon and its seeds traveled out of Africa and the Middle East to the Mediterranean and eventually, Europe. Strauss noted that by the third century, the watermelon “had graduated from desert crop to dessert.” It had “yellow orange-orange flesh that, in subsequent years, would take on its familiar red hue.” That’s because watermelons continued to be bred for sweetness, altering the color.

Ancient Greeks called it pepon. Watermelon influenced physicians like Hippocrates and Dioscorides, who believed it had medicinal properties. They used it as a diuretic or for treating heatstroke. It was wet, cool, and tasty. They often placed the rind on a child’s head to treat heat-related illnesses.

They didn’t look the same as today’s luscious red fruit. By the seventh century, watermelons were cultivated in India and a few centuries later, China. It’s believed that the Moors introduced it in Spain and Captain James brought it to Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. European colonists brought it to the New World as early as 1576. Spanish settlers brought watermelon to South America.

A global delight.

By 1864 it looked more like the watermelon we eat today. Check out this painting by Romanian Artist Mihail Ştefânescu:

Compliments of Wikimedia Commons

Today there are over 1,200 varieties of watermelon. You can get them seedless, mini, orange, white, yellow, or red inside – even square-shaped (from Japan).

They have names like Allsweet, Georgia Rattlesnake, Klondike Blue Ribbon Striped, and Sugar Baby. You can grow them in your backyard or buy them at the market. Most eat them fresh but many put them into drinks, salads, recipes . . . even pickle them.

Today’s watermelon is about 92% water, low fat and carbs – a tasty way to hydrate with few calories. There are those infamous watermelon seed-spitting contests – the record held by Jason Schayot. He spit the seeds 75 feet and two inches (about the length of 5 minivans). That’s a lot of seeds, especially if they came from the largest watermelon ever grown by Chris Kent in Tennessee. The watermelon weighed a svelte 350 pounds (the weight of a baby elephant).

You can’t go wrong with the food that angels eat.