Food

Do You Know How Your Favorite Foods Look Before They're Picked?

We're so used to picking up our favorite foods from the grocery store that we don't pay much attention to where they come from. Today you can even buy fruit and herbs in packages, so it's possible kids think that little plastic bags grow on trees.

But the truth is much, much stranger. Even some of the fruit we eat every day looks downright weird before it's been picked or processed. Other foods are just surprising because you never would've guessed how they grow until you see it yourself.

See how many of these everyday foods you recognize. But be warned you may never look at breakfast the same way again!

Vanilla

The flowers are pretty, but the flavor actually comes from the dried "beans" that grow on it.

Saffron

This spice is made from tiny, dried parts of the saffron flower.

Pistachios

We know the seeds best, but they're actually taken from the pistachio fruit.

Peanuts

Yep, they grow in the ground!

Kiwi

Cranberry

Cranberries grow on bushes, then when they're ready to harvest the fields are flooded so they rise to the surface.

Cocoa (chocolate)

It can take as many as 20 of these pods - which are filled with smaller cocoa beans - to make just a pound of chocolate.

Click the next page to see more fruits as you've never seen them before, including bananas!

Cashew

Cashews aren't really nuts, they're made from the seeds of a fruit called the cashew apple.

Black Pepper

The spice is made from the dried fruit of the pepper vine.

Artichoke

We eat these before they bloom.

Almond

Bananas

Brussel Sprouts

Cinnamon

That's right, cinnamon is made from the bark of the cinnamon tree.

Click to the next page to find out what quinoa really looks like!

Coffee

Making coffee from the tiny beans inside the berries growing on the coffee tree is hard work. It takes 16 trees to grow the coffee an average American drinks in a year.

Dates

Mango

Pineapple

Quinoa

Sesame seeds

Wasabi (the spicy green stuff that comes with your sushi)

Share these photos if any of them surprised you!

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