Last night, while rambling about how much I love broccoli and how I prepared the broccoli for our dinner because I am just an incredibly interesting person who is very fun to be around, Morrison informed me that broccoli is in fact a man-made vegetable. Having assumed my whole life that I knew this vegetable that I loved ever so, I was AGHAST. I went straight to the internet, by which I mean, I literally googled ‘The history of broccoli,’ where I found:

Broccoli, botanically known as Brassica oleracea italica, is native to the Mediterranean. It was engineered from a cabbage relative by the Etruscans—an ancient Italian civilization who lived in what is now Tuscany—who were considered to be horticultural geniuses.

What is a horticultural genius? How does one turn a cabbage into broccoli? WHO WERE THE ETRUSCANS? NEXT PLAY? FIRST CAKE, THEN BROCCOLI? SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM MYSELF