This link looks very interesting:
http://www.naturalhub.com/natural_food_guide_fruit_common.htm
These notes are a look at the fruits
that are commercially available that
we Westerners eat, but from a
hunter-gatherer evolutionary
perspective. It is a 'guided tour',
not of the diversity of fruits in the
natural environment we evolved in, but
rather the fruits that are now
commercially available to eat, and how
it is we came to be eating only these
fruits.
Evolution has forced us to become
vitamin C junkies - unlike most
animals, we can't synthesize it
ourselves, we have to obtain it from
the food we eat. Fruit and vegetables,
and to a lesser extent, organ meats,
are the prime source.
Only some of the wild fruits that were
all around our ancestors have been
domesticated. So the number of species
available to us now is less - at first
glance. But because commerce provides
us with fruit from all the continents
of the world, our actual daily
possible selection range is probably
as good as was available to our
ancestors. And the fruits we now have
available have much fewer unpleasant
tannins and glycosides than some of
the wild fruits. The fleshy part is
larger, and the seediness in some
cases reduced or eliminated.
Also an interesting paper summary here about what fruit traits may be related to domestication:
http://eco.confex.com/eco/2008/techprogram/P10938.HTM
This paper might be useful as well:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/origins%20of%20fruits.pdf