Why did humans domesticate celery when it has very little nutritional value?
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Celery was cultivated relatively recently and was first grown for potential medicinal properties rather than as a food.
Celery leaves have very few calories in them but can be used as seasoning. However the stem and especially the root of the celery plant is a lot more nutritional. Celery is also able to grow in colder weather then most other vegetables and you can therefore get more harvests in a year and also harvest them in winter when there is not much other greens around. Eating just a little celery in the winter when the meals mostly consisted of meat and bread would prevent a lot of deficiencies of vitamins and minerals.
Celery doesn’t have many macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, fat, or protein, but that doesn’t mean that it’s devoid of important nutrients. Celery is a great source of vitamin K, folate, molybdenum, potassium, and dietary fiber. It also has lower levels of vitamin C, vitamin A, and some B vitamin complexes.
seeds taste good, leaves taste okay, root tastes bad but is substantive food you can keep as a root vegetable, the stalk just kinda got to come along for free.
It’s tasty. Celery is one of the three standard ingredients in [mirepoix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirepoix_(cuisine)), an essential in classic cooking.
Celery’s high glutamate level adds [umami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami).
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