Watermelon is true to its name: about 92% of its weight is plain water. Slice one open and most of what you’re seeing is water held inside the fruit’s cells, with just a small amount of sugars, fibre, and vitamins mixed in. That is why eating watermelon on a hot day feels so refreshing.
Watermelons were first grown in northeast Africa around 5,000 years ago. In a region with long, dry summers and no fridges, a fruit you could store for weeks and crack open like a water bottle was incredibly useful. Egyptian tombs sometimes contained watermelon seeds for the journey to the afterlife.
The whole fruit is edible. The red flesh is the sweet part, but the white rind and even the green skin can be pickled or cooked. The seeds can be roasted like sunflower seeds. The biggest watermelon ever recorded weighed 159 kilograms - about the same as two adult humans.
