The turnip has been around longer than you might think; in fact, about 4,000 years. It is thought first to have been cultivated in the Near East.

This Brassica root crop was once used by the Romans to throw at unpopular people. The low esteem associated with this vegetable may have been influenced by the fact that it was the primary food of poor country people in ancient Greece and Rome. Yet there were a few upper-class Romans who ate turnips but masked them with cumin and honey. As time passed, turnips became more popular with the Greeks and Romans and they developed several new varieties.

The turnip’s popularity spread throughout Europe and it continues today, but once the potato was introduced, the turnip became much less cultivated. The nature of turnips then was far different from the present-day turnip.

The turnip, more precisely turnip root, is an excellent food source for humans, and has also been a popular livestock fodder. Animals have been fed turnips for at le...