Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

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When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science.

I'm Suzanne Bard.

Peter Brugel's iconic 1565 painting, The Harvesters, hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The work depicts peasants cutting stalks of wheat nearly as tall as they are.

Nowadays, if you walk through a wheat field,

you basically see that wheat is about knee height. The short statue is essentially a consequence

of breeding from the second half of the 20th century. University of Ghent biologist Eve De Smet,

selective breeding favored genes for reduced height because they came along with genes for increasing yields to feed a growing population.

De Smet says wheat is just one example of how historical artwork can allow us to track the transformation of food crops over time.

He teamed up with art historian David Frothoen of Amarant to catalog such artwork from around the world.

We have been mainly looking at things where we can spot changes in shape, in color, in size.

Friends since childhood, their interest in plants in artwork began with a visit to the Hermitage Museum

in St. Petersburg, Russia, where they noticed an odd-looking watermelon

in an early 17th century painting by Flemish artist Franz Snyders. So if you think of a watermelon,

you cut it through, it should be dark red on the inside, but that one appeared to be pale and white.

Biologists Dismet assumed the painter had done a poor job, but art historian Frahauer had a different idea.

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