The world's rainforests provide a stunning 80% of the world's diet. Tropical rainforests produce many common foods such as avocados, bananas, coconuts, corn, figs, grapefruit, guavas, lemons, mangos, manioc (tapioca), oranges, papaya, pinapples, potatoes, rice, tomatoes, winter squash, and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, and tumeric.  Coffee, vanilla, teas, and nuts, including Brazil nuts, peanuts, and cashews, all come from the rainforests. The list extends to many countless foods that make up the staple for many inhabitants of the third world countries as well as major exports in billions of dollars annually.

   New foods are also discovered everyday like the feijoa, a relative of the guava which has the flavor of a pineapple, and the naranjilla which looks like a fuzzy tomato, but tastes like a strawberry/pineapple. It may seem somewhat awkward to walk into a grocery store purchase a bag of feijoas, but a lot of the foods that are common to us today, were once exotic and expensive. For example, 200 years ago bananas were individually wrapped and cost $2 a piece.