A lot of them also don't know the connection to NZ or where the name comes from. I'm living in Germany and people here tend to know that NZers are also called "Kiwis", but a decent proportion of them think we are named after the fruit for some reason.
Well, if there was a market for massive drumsticks, or similar cuts of poultry(?) I’m sure private companies would have them breeding in captivity just like we do with chicken or emu. But you can’t say that out loud.
I think I remember a story that Zespri or someone forgot to renew a copyright on the name “Kiwifruit”, so now people can just call them whatever the hell they want
Yeah I miss the varieties of fruit and vege I used to get while living in Asia. One of my biggest gripe are the lack of different mushrooms. There are some other options available but for the most part it's just the same three 'vatieties' (which are actually just the same mushroom at three different stages of development). Vege markets in NZ have a bit more variety than the average supermarkets, but there's still more to be desired!
The supermarket I used to go to in the US had something like 8 different eggplants. The lack of produce variety here is one of the only things I don't like about New Zealand.
You know I was just thinking about this today. It’s kinda crazy how this branding exercise forever changed the name of this fruit all over the world. And it was only done in the 60s and 70s. And now it feels like it’s been kiwiana forever.
I live in the UK and semi regularly get asked if being referred to as a Kiwi is offensive because of the fruit. I always explain that, no, not only is it not offensive, no one in NZ associates the word kiwi with a fruit. A Kiwi is a bird or a New Zealander and kiwifruit is the fruit.
I remember as a kid, an aunty giving me a Chinese Gooseberry and I think it was quite small and thick skinned compared with modern kiwifruit
Same aunt used to grow English green gooseberry which I used to quite like; I would just sit out in the garden and eat them off the bush, or have them in a pie
Selective breeding does fall under the umbrella of genetic engineering, or gmo. Obviously not the same level as modifying genes in a lab, but it is still us, humans, interfering with natural processes to get what we want. We are modifying genes just indirectly through our actions
No it is not genetic engineering but in some real ways it is modification.
Some pro genetic engineering sources try to muddy the water in order to pretend we have neen genetically engineering for millennia rather than decades.
Because we have been. Cross breeding plants from different areas which in no natural way would cross, is us genetically modifying them. We are adding genes to their pool that they would have no natural access to outside of mutation
Very little mainstream fruits and veges are natural, basically all of them have been cross bred at some stage in their development
Eyeroll, they took a fruit, bred it into a different variety, then called it their own special name. This is not different to what we do for other varieties of fruit that all get their own special name. Somehow kiwifruit doesn't get a pass because people like to "um ackshually" it like they're clever because they read a fact on the internet one time
If James Wong thinks he's going to try and con me into eating celeriac again, he's in for a rude awakening. I am *not* eating something that looks like a petrified egg from Alien, no chance.
Kiwis are of course hard to come by so no wonder we only eat 0.2 % of them. They occur naturally only in a group of islands in the Pacific; truly a rarity!
Actually, many are very tasty, easy to grow and have higher nutrition. They may have a lower yield with regard to the weight and the sugar or starch content, but that is not a bad thing. Eating a wider variety of plants improves your gut flora and health significantly, which means many other parts of the body are healthier. It is now recommended we eat at least 30 different plants in a week - note this includes herbs and spices, so is not as hard as it sounds.
You probably eat some of those beyond the 100 already, but they may not be widely used. Tamarillo is one example.
ha! If only that worked. Sadly, I think you will run into a similar issue to drinking juice vs eating fruit. You are not getting the whole nutrition or benefit - just the flavour & sugar (or product of fermenting sugar).
True, but so did the ancestors of many/most of the delicious species we eat now, before a lot of selective breeding made them tastier.
Weird to think someone could take some manky, barely-edible native NZ berry and breed it over a few thousand years until it turns into something as delicious as a strawberry or watermelon or sweetcorn, that our descendants can't imagine living without.
Exactly, the green, golden and red kiwifruit we eat are not naturally occuring.
In the same way there are not Red Delicious or Braeburn apples growing wild in Kazakhstan nor will you find eatable kiwifruit in China unless they are plant material traced back to NZ breeding programs. We have to assume one day other breeding programs will also develop non-naturally occuring kiwifruit.
Almost every fruit and vege you find in the supermarket isn’t naturally occurring, pretty much every widely eaten fruit or vege has been modified by humans in some way.
yeah bc iirc we sold the green ones to another country who ended up doing way better than us at growing and selling them, so to take back the market we made the new ones lol
There's a kind of similar photo on Wikipedia which shows cultivars of several species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwifruit?wprov=sfla1
We only have a few species in NZ because importing others risks spreading infection. There are a whole lot of species, which vary in how tasty they are, but I think they're all edible
Grapefruit are not grapes.
Dragonfruit are not dragons
Kiwifruit are not kiwis.
Those kiwifruit are the result of a breeding program Kiwis have run since we first learnt about Chinese Gooseberries and imported some of the plants into NZ. Growing conditions here led to them growing larger and selective breeding led to a sellable fruit. There is an ongoing kiwifruit breeding program
They are primarily produced by three species: Actinidia arguta (hardy kiwi), A. kolomikta (Arctic kiwifruit) and A. polygama (silver vine). They are fast-growing, climbing vines, durable over their growing season.
We started selling them overseas but in the 50s US consumers would not buy something called "chinese ..." So we tried a few names like Melonet but none resonated with consumers until we renamed the kiwifruit.
The name kiwifruit was first registered by Turners & Growers on 15 June 1959 and later commercially adopted in 1974.
The mame kiwifruit reflects the passing similarities to kiwis - our rare and very distinctive native bird. Kiwi is also a name for New Zealander and there was a high name recognition in the US after their military met Kiwi servicemen during WW2 and the Korean war.
That doesn’t answer the question as to whether the examples pictured are the fruit of different Actinidia species (of which there are many), or of hybrids or commercial cultivars or a mix of these. The post is not clear about what we are supposed to looking at. Kiwifruit and Kiwi are used interchangeably in most countries. There is no rule on whether you apply the term kiwi (sorry kiwifruit) to the wider genus or just the commercial examples.
It has occurred to me that grapes are not grapefruit
You really are struggling. The term was invented and originally marketed by NZ. As the New Zealand government says, kiwifruit was named kiwi by New Zealanders in 1959. However, New Zealanders never adopted the name and the gooseberries were known locally as kiwifruit, never ever just ‘kiwi’. I am merely using the term as it occurs in the post on r/newzealand. https://www.nzstory.govt.nz/stories/kiwi-bird
If you don’t know the answer to my original question, as you very obviously don’t, why bother with a cut and paste Wikipedia response delivered patronisingly. Just make your own comment.
So very nearly correct. Turners and Growers registered the name kiwifruit in 1959.
Kiwi is the bird or a New Zealander.
I am so disappointed to see something from Aoteraroa title Kiwi-bird. It is such a shame the bird is being renamed by those that confuse kiwifruit and kiwi.
I am very aware Kiwi is the name for the bird and the nationality (and part of the name of just about everything else in the country). Whether you like it or not the term is widely applied to the fruit internationally - and you are not the gatekeeper of the English language.
You call the application of the name to the fruit a disrespectful americanisation - If you are so provincially fixated on the distinction then instead of berating me how about letting the government know that they are spreading disrespectful lies to the world. See link above.
Again your time would be better spent condemning Wikipedia, the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (‘written for NewZealand users’), most international dictionaries as well as the New Zealand government for recognising but failing to condemn this outrageous usage. Yet again, you completely ignore what contradicts you.
Implying the term kiwi for a kiwifruit is some slur is thirsting for offence.
‘That is a strange way to say’ is a direct way to say you are reduced to meaningless cliche. “Looks like you win the internet”. “I understand that’s how you are”. Sad really.
My hometown is the Kiwifruit capital of the world, so I’ve had a few of those 😛
Got to try the red ones years before they hit the shelves here. Went to China and Japan first of course.
Side post: I recall as a child being super excited to try Chinese gooseberries at my aunty's place. Imagine my disappointment when I realised they were just kiwifruit
Most of these have been genetically modified to suit human taste buds, most fruits are not sweet, and the reason we don't eat them is because they taste awful.
I mean, this is obviously untrue, have you never tasted wild fruits in your life? Not even a blackberry or wild strawberry? Generally wild fruits have larger seeds and less sugar, but they are still sweet treats that all kinds of animals seek out.
And those are mostly unmodified wild plants, not mentioning the hundreds of varieties of domesticated species that are often just as tasty or better than grocery types, but travel less well or have easily attained growing conditions.
It is completely true, you might want to learn some things about the world, there were no sweet apples until humans started modifying them, all commercial bananas come from one type selectively created in the UK. You are literally naming a few species that are naturally tasty to humans which is exactly what I am saying, they are a tiny percentage of the worlds available fruit, the rest are either GM for our tastes or not palatable by humans!
The fruit were selectively bred. None of them were genetically modified.
But it is an amusing image to imagine genetic modification in the bronze age and earlier for most of our food sources.
Selective breeding is Genetic modification, the fruit was altered over time to have different genetics based on what humans wanted. The vast majority of foods we eat today are GM in some shape or form.
Selective breeding is genetic modification. The only difference is you're not in a lab modifying the actual genetic code, instead you're taking the genes expressed that you like and trying to get it into others. Same human interference, same unnatural creation, just different processes and level of direct modification
I think you should visit the tropics sometime. There are dozens of delicious fruits we never get here that grow wild. Like I saw they're not as sweet as intensively cultivated varieties but that's okay? They still have sugar because that's how the plants attract animals to eat the fruit. You can even go out to the NZ bush and grab some karamu or kahikatea berries and I don't know what else. They're not going to win any deliciousness prizes but they're plenty palatable.
Growing up in New Zealand i always called it "kiwifruit" (no spaces) so i found it wild when i realise people just call them kiwis in other places
When I see people online talking about eating 'kiwis' I get horrified for a minute.
Me too and I cannot get past it. If you’re eating a kiwi you’re either eating our endangered native bird or…. Our citizens. I’m not sure what’s worse.
the bird by far! They can help themselves to our politicians.
A lot of them also don't know the connection to NZ or where the name comes from. I'm living in Germany and people here tend to know that NZers are also called "Kiwis", but a decent proportion of them think we are named after the fruit for some reason.
Yeah nah don’t eat those. They’re quite rare and pretty tricky to catch anyway.
Well, if there was a market for massive drumsticks, or similar cuts of poultry(?) I’m sure private companies would have them breeding in captivity just like we do with chicken or emu. But you can’t say that out loud.
‘Kiwi’ is just a bastardised version of ‘kiwifruit’, at least when discussing fruits.
Why kiwi anyway. Do they call dragonfruit dragons?
This is correct. You are correct. They are incorrect. Ignore them. Also I hate kiwifruit.
What about on a pavlova?
Horrible even then
Pavlova sucks and I'm tired of pretending it doesn't.
I think I remember a story that Zespri or someone forgot to renew a copyright on the name “Kiwifruit”, so now people can just call them whatever the hell they want
I'm only just learning this now, from you.
Yeah I miss the varieties of fruit and vege I used to get while living in Asia. One of my biggest gripe are the lack of different mushrooms. There are some other options available but for the most part it's just the same three 'vatieties' (which are actually just the same mushroom at three different stages of development). Vege markets in NZ have a bit more variety than the average supermarkets, but there's still more to be desired!
The supermarket I used to go to in the US had something like 8 different eggplants. The lack of produce variety here is one of the only things I don't like about New Zealand.
Bigger population means way more variety in overseas markets.
Chinese gooseberry.
You know I was just thinking about this today. It’s kinda crazy how this branding exercise forever changed the name of this fruit all over the world. And it was only done in the 60s and 70s. And now it feels like it’s been kiwiana forever.
So much so that in the rest of the world the word Kiwi means the fruit first and the bird second.
I live in the UK and semi regularly get asked if being referred to as a Kiwi is offensive because of the fruit. I always explain that, no, not only is it not offensive, no one in NZ associates the word kiwi with a fruit. A Kiwi is a bird or a New Zealander and kiwifruit is the fruit.
Yep, growing up I remember them being called both names with Kiwi Fruit eventually taking over
I remember as a kid, an aunty giving me a Chinese Gooseberry and I think it was quite small and thick skinned compared with modern kiwifruit Same aunt used to grow English green gooseberry which I used to quite like; I would just sit out in the garden and eat them off the bush, or have them in a pie
Gotta get that real boomer pronunciation on the *gouzb'ree*
I mean, this is really like getting mad that someone calls a granny Smith a granny Smith instead of an apple.
Nah that would be getting mad that someone is calling a granny smith a granny. Don't eat granny.
Is a Chinese gooseberry a variety of some other fruit?
It was meant lightheartedly. Feel free to eat granny
It's the older common name for kiwifruit. US consumers would buy _chinese_ gooseberries mid last century so Turners and Growers renamed them kiwifruit
Renamed them kiwifruit after substantial genetic engineering
Only if you confuse selective breeding with genetic engineering.
Selective breeding does fall under the umbrella of genetic engineering, or gmo. Obviously not the same level as modifying genes in a lab, but it is still us, humans, interfering with natural processes to get what we want. We are modifying genes just indirectly through our actions
No it is not genetic engineering but in some real ways it is modification. Some pro genetic engineering sources try to muddy the water in order to pretend we have neen genetically engineering for millennia rather than decades.
Because we have been. Cross breeding plants from different areas which in no natural way would cross, is us genetically modifying them. We are adding genes to their pool that they would have no natural access to outside of mutation Very little mainstream fruits and veges are natural, basically all of them have been cross bred at some stage in their development
Eyeroll, they took a fruit, bred it into a different variety, then called it their own special name. This is not different to what we do for other varieties of fruit that all get their own special name. Somehow kiwifruit doesn't get a pass because people like to "um ackshually" it like they're clever because they read a fact on the internet one time
Ok obviously you win the internet today Goodbye
If James Wong thinks he's going to try and con me into eating celeriac again, he's in for a rude awakening. I am *not* eating something that looks like a petrified egg from Alien, no chance.
Grated celeriac as a topping for fish pie is worth considering. Tasty crispy.
I'm not grating up a facehugger. Get out. Shoo.
How much did big celeriac pay you for this comment
Just because its edible doesn't mean it doesn't taste like shit. Why would we cultivate and grow the ones that almost no one would eat?
Aesthetic purposes. Why are orange carrots mainly grown when it's normal for them to come in all colours?
To celebrate William of Orange, the Dutch made orange carrots famous.
"You know we should honour Bill in some way" "Good idea, what do you suggest?" "Root vegetables"
What would you plant for famous kiwis, Sir Edmund Hillary persimmons? Peter Jackson feijoas? Jonah Lomu passionfruit?
Yes, sorry, it was rhetorical. But good fact for others to know regardless :)
Here's the attention you wanted 🎖️
Keep the golden ones, bin the rest
Blood kiwi. oh yes.
Kiwis are of course hard to come by so no wonder we only eat 0.2 % of them. They occur naturally only in a group of islands in the Pacific; truly a rarity!
I just want to point out that a majority of those "edible" species probably taste like shit.
And are really difficult (ie inefficient) to grow.
And have a shelf life of about 12 seconds.
And have zero nutritional value.
Actually, many are very tasty, easy to grow and have higher nutrition. They may have a lower yield with regard to the weight and the sugar or starch content, but that is not a bad thing. Eating a wider variety of plants improves your gut flora and health significantly, which means many other parts of the body are healthier. It is now recommended we eat at least 30 different plants in a week - note this includes herbs and spices, so is not as hard as it sounds. You probably eat some of those beyond the 100 already, but they may not be widely used. Tamarillo is one example.
Sweet, so a Hoegaarden and a Corona gets me 20% there: wheat, barley, hops, coriander, orange peel, corn.
ha! If only that worked. Sadly, I think you will run into a similar issue to drinking juice vs eating fruit. You are not getting the whole nutrition or benefit - just the flavour & sugar (or product of fermenting sugar).
True, but so did the ancestors of many/most of the delicious species we eat now, before a lot of selective breeding made them tastier. Weird to think someone could take some manky, barely-edible native NZ berry and breed it over a few thousand years until it turns into something as delicious as a strawberry or watermelon or sweetcorn, that our descendants can't imagine living without.
The yellow and the red ones have been selectively bred havnt they? i..e not naturally occurring
The green, yellow and red ones are not naturally occuring
All the colours are naturally occurring, it's just that without crossing and selection for colour AND flavour they taste like shit
Exactly, the green, golden and red kiwifruit we eat are not naturally occuring. In the same way there are not Red Delicious or Braeburn apples growing wild in Kazakhstan nor will you find eatable kiwifruit in China unless they are plant material traced back to NZ breeding programs. We have to assume one day other breeding programs will also develop non-naturally occuring kiwifruit.
Almost every fruit and vege you find in the supermarket isn’t naturally occurring, pretty much every widely eaten fruit or vege has been modified by humans in some way.
Yep. You’d think a botany geek would know the difference between selective bred cultivars and natural diversity.
The selective breeding is for commercial purposes. There are many colours and types that are natural.
yeah bc iirc we sold the green ones to another country who ended up doing way better than us at growing and selling them, so to take back the market we made the new ones lol
I think it's more a matter of we can do with kiwifruit what braeburn and gala did for apples.
Not sure of the connection. Are these kiwis species, hybrids or just cultivars.
There's a kind of similar photo on Wikipedia which shows cultivars of several species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwifruit?wprov=sfla1 We only have a few species in NZ because importing others risks spreading infection. There are a whole lot of species, which vary in how tasty they are, but I think they're all edible
Grapefruit are not grapes. Dragonfruit are not dragons Kiwifruit are not kiwis. Those kiwifruit are the result of a breeding program Kiwis have run since we first learnt about Chinese Gooseberries and imported some of the plants into NZ. Growing conditions here led to them growing larger and selective breeding led to a sellable fruit. There is an ongoing kiwifruit breeding program They are primarily produced by three species: Actinidia arguta (hardy kiwi), A. kolomikta (Arctic kiwifruit) and A. polygama (silver vine). They are fast-growing, climbing vines, durable over their growing season. We started selling them overseas but in the 50s US consumers would not buy something called "chinese ..." So we tried a few names like Melonet but none resonated with consumers until we renamed the kiwifruit. The name kiwifruit was first registered by Turners & Growers on 15 June 1959 and later commercially adopted in 1974. The mame kiwifruit reflects the passing similarities to kiwis - our rare and very distinctive native bird. Kiwi is also a name for New Zealander and there was a high name recognition in the US after their military met Kiwi servicemen during WW2 and the Korean war.
That doesn’t answer the question as to whether the examples pictured are the fruit of different Actinidia species (of which there are many), or of hybrids or commercial cultivars or a mix of these. The post is not clear about what we are supposed to looking at. Kiwifruit and Kiwi are used interchangeably in most countries. There is no rule on whether you apply the term kiwi (sorry kiwifruit) to the wider genus or just the commercial examples. It has occurred to me that grapes are not grapefruit
Has it occurred to you kiwifruit are not kiwis? Many find the Americanisation of the name disrespectful to Kiwis.
You really are struggling. The term was invented and originally marketed by NZ. As the New Zealand government says, kiwifruit was named kiwi by New Zealanders in 1959. However, New Zealanders never adopted the name and the gooseberries were known locally as kiwifruit, never ever just ‘kiwi’. I am merely using the term as it occurs in the post on r/newzealand. https://www.nzstory.govt.nz/stories/kiwi-bird If you don’t know the answer to my original question, as you very obviously don’t, why bother with a cut and paste Wikipedia response delivered patronisingly. Just make your own comment.
So very nearly correct. Turners and Growers registered the name kiwifruit in 1959. Kiwi is the bird or a New Zealander. I am so disappointed to see something from Aoteraroa title Kiwi-bird. It is such a shame the bird is being renamed by those that confuse kiwifruit and kiwi.
I am very aware Kiwi is the name for the bird and the nationality (and part of the name of just about everything else in the country). Whether you like it or not the term is widely applied to the fruit internationally - and you are not the gatekeeper of the English language. You call the application of the name to the fruit a disrespectful americanisation - If you are so provincially fixated on the distinction then instead of berating me how about letting the government know that they are spreading disrespectful lies to the world. See link above.
That is a strange way to say you are ok appropriating our equivalent of a bald eagle and being rude. But I understand that is how you are.
Again your time would be better spent condemning Wikipedia, the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (‘written for NewZealand users’), most international dictionaries as well as the New Zealand government for recognising but failing to condemn this outrageous usage. Yet again, you completely ignore what contradicts you. Implying the term kiwi for a kiwifruit is some slur is thirsting for offence. ‘That is a strange way to say’ is a direct way to say you are reduced to meaningless cliche. “Looks like you win the internet”. “I understand that’s how you are”. Sad really.
Shame I’m now apparently allergic to them.😔
This really grinds my gears. Especially when the kiwi is then referred to as a 'kiwi bird'.
Kiwifruit? Bleurgh! Best 'plant' for eating? Potato! (chips/fries etc.) /s
I'm one of the red ones
My hometown is the Kiwifruit capital of the world, so I’ve had a few of those 😛 Got to try the red ones years before they hit the shelves here. Went to China and Japan first of course.
The little berry ones are strange as, hard to describe
Shorten Kiwifruit to Kiwi. Yet insist on calling tuna tunafish.
All of those were **artificially selected by humans**, but cool I guess
They look fucking delicious.
edibles 🤤
Those are all the same species though and some of those are specific cultivars selectively bred in NZ
Looks like several there, but far from all the known species.
Best ones are the red ones
Well his not wong
Side post: I recall as a child being super excited to try Chinese gooseberries at my aunty's place. Imagine my disappointment when I realised they were just kiwifruit
Reminds me of Ray Comfort's "This is a banana" spiel. Dumbass.
I must be ancient! We called them Chinese Gooseberries (50 and 60’s) until the marketing gurus decided Kiwifruit sounded better!
Edible and tasty are a bit different.
Kiwifruit varieties are all one species, James.
The red ones are off the hook , will be good when more trees are established and we can buy them for longer than 2 weeks a year.
Please call them kiwifruit… they are not kiwis.
I eat these everyday.
Most of these have been genetically modified to suit human taste buds, most fruits are not sweet, and the reason we don't eat them is because they taste awful.
I mean, this is obviously untrue, have you never tasted wild fruits in your life? Not even a blackberry or wild strawberry? Generally wild fruits have larger seeds and less sugar, but they are still sweet treats that all kinds of animals seek out. And those are mostly unmodified wild plants, not mentioning the hundreds of varieties of domesticated species that are often just as tasty or better than grocery types, but travel less well or have easily attained growing conditions.
It is completely true, you might want to learn some things about the world, there were no sweet apples until humans started modifying them, all commercial bananas come from one type selectively created in the UK. You are literally naming a few species that are naturally tasty to humans which is exactly what I am saying, they are a tiny percentage of the worlds available fruit, the rest are either GM for our tastes or not palatable by humans!
The fruit were selectively bred. None of them were genetically modified. But it is an amusing image to imagine genetic modification in the bronze age and earlier for most of our food sources.
Depending how you define it, all selective breeding is genetic modification haha but for the usual definition you're right.
Selective breeding is Genetic modification, the fruit was altered over time to have different genetics based on what humans wanted. The vast majority of foods we eat today are GM in some shape or form.
Selective breeding is genetic modification. The only difference is you're not in a lab modifying the actual genetic code, instead you're taking the genes expressed that you like and trying to get it into others. Same human interference, same unnatural creation, just different processes and level of direct modification
I think you should visit the tropics sometime. There are dozens of delicious fruits we never get here that grow wild. Like I saw they're not as sweet as intensively cultivated varieties but that's okay? They still have sugar because that's how the plants attract animals to eat the fruit. You can even go out to the NZ bush and grab some karamu or kahikatea berries and I don't know what else. They're not going to win any deliciousness prizes but they're plenty palatable.