Per Wikipedia: “Vegetables are edible parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. This original meaning is still commonly used, and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including flowers, fruits, stems, leaves, roots, and seeds.”
Fun fact: in Italian we have 2 different words for vegetables (the reign) and vegetables(the culinary word) which is respectively: vegetali and verdure
This kind of debate always comes down to a mismatch between botanical and culinary terminology. The real question is which of those contexts are you speaking in.
it’s kinda like how people insist that paradoxes are some wild freaky thing, when in reality it’s just “we don’t know what would happen because it’s not real and doesn’t make sense in reality as we know it”.
Or like “did you know there’s no such thing as a fish?” when in reality obviously fish are real, it’s just that fish describes the shape of a creature.people just love fixating on and exaggerating stuff like this, presumably because it starts arguments online
Intelligence is knowing that tomatoes are fruits
Wisdom is knowing that tomatoes don’t belong in a fruit salad
Charisma is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad.
Constitution is being able to eat a tomato-based fruit salad
Dexterity is being able to eat around the tomato.
There are two supermarket chains in my area. One puts canned olives in the canned vegetable aisle, the other in the canned fruit aisle. And I always forget which is which and invariably end up in the wrong aisle.
Mine has them in the “condiments” section, next to pickles
It also has a section labeled “beans”, but that’s only dry beans. The canned ones are in “canned vegetables”
Fruit - botanical term
vegetable - culinary term exclusively
Though, fruit also has an alternative culinary meaning.
Interesting lil fact: The question of whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893. The court ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is correctly identified as, and thus taxed as, a vegetable, for the purposes of the Tariff of 1883 on imported produce. However, the court acknowledged that, botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.[9]
Interesting little fact: a factoid is not a little fact, it’s something that appears like a fact but is in fact false. Think like how an android is a fake human, a factoid is a fake fact.
oh good to know! I will edit my comment, thank you for letting me know, I like learning new things :)
in portuguese, fruit (botanical) and fruit (culinary) are 2 distinct words, respectively are, “fruto” and “fruta”
And “Vegetable” is any and all plants. Is the name of the whole reign.
See I kinda wish we had this distinction, but English is a dumb language.
Vegetables are edible plant parts. Fruits are a specific type of vegetable.
Its a real square-rectangle thing.
Fun fact - there are also non-edible fruits (such as horsenettle “wild tomato”, which is poisonous), so it’s more a Venn diagram thing!
Or the potato fruit, was quite the issue with popularizing potatoes as a food crop!
MAPLE SYRUP IS A VEGETABLE
They’re both.
Vegetable is a food category, fruit is a biological category (part of the plant).Here’s the thing. You said a “fruits are vegetables.”
Are they edible parts of plants? Yes. No one’s arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies food, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls fruits vegetables. If you want to be “specific” like you said, then you shouldn’t either. They’re not the same thing.
If you’re saying “fruits” you’re referring to the botanical grouping of fructus, which includes things from nuts to tomatoes to pumpkins.
So your reasoning for calling fruits a vegetable is because random people “call the edible parts vegetables?” Let’s get roots and leaves in there, then, too.
Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It’s not one or the other, that’s not how taxonomy works. They’re both. A vegetable is a vegetable and a member of the frouit grouping. But that’s not what you said. You said a fruits are vegetables, which is not true unless you’re okay with calling all edible plant parts vegetables, which means you’d call seeds, bark, and parts vegetables, too. Which you said you don’t.
It’s okay to just admit you’re wrong, you know?
I’m so glad this bit of history made it to this side of the Reddit collapse.
Fuck I miss Unidan
“Here’s the thing” is all it takes
Plant.
Eat plant.
Absorb plant power.
🤯
I’ve always tackled this problem by seeing it differently depending on the context, “culinary” or “scientific” . Scientifically, a Jalapeño is a fruit, but culinarily it is a vegetable. Same with other foods like tomato being a fruit or cucumber being a berry. They’re just vegetables in a cooking context but not in a scientific one
Reminds me of the Smarty Pants “vegetables don’t exist” presentation
Relevant Smartypants episode: https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/birthdays-the-cookout-vegetables (dropout subscription required) 22m20s onwards for the relevant segment but that whole episode’s a banger
Sounds insufferable!
