Broccoli

History

Broccoli is an Italian masterpiece of agricultural selection, developed from wild cabbage (Brassica oleracea) along the Mediterranean coast over 2,000 years ago. The name derives from the Italian "broccolo," meaning "the flowering crest of a cabbage," and the Romans prized it as a delicacy—Pliny the Elder wrote about broccoli in the first century CE, and it was reportedly a favorite of the Roman emperor Tiberius's son Drusus. Italian gardeners, particularly in Calabria and Sicily, refined broccoli over centuries, selecting for larger, tighter flower heads that could be eaten before flowering. Catherine de Medici introduced broccoli to France when she married King Henry II in the 16th century, but it remained primarily an Italian vegetable for centuries. Italian immigrants brought broccoli to America in the 1880s, where it grew in Italian-American communities in California and New York. Commercial production began in the 1920s, but broccoli remained obscure to most Americans until the D'Arrigo Brothers marketing campaign of the 1920s-30s promoted "Italian sprouting broccoli" to mainstream consumers. President George H.W. Bush famously declared his dislike of broccoli in 1990, causing California growers to dump truckloads on the White House lawn in protest. Today, broccoli is one of America's most consumed vegetables, with California producing over 90% of the U.S. supply. The discovery of sulforaphane—a powerful cancer-fighting compound—in broccoli during the 1990s transformed its image from ordinary vegetable to certified "superfood."