According to Wikipedia there are at least four definitions relating to fruits and vegetables:
- Fruit (botany): the ovary of a flowering plant (sometimes including accessory structures)
- Fruit (culinary): any edible part of a plant with a sweet flavor
- Vegetable (culinary): any edible part of a plant with a savory flavor
- Vegetable (legal): commodities that are taxed as vegetables in a particular jurisdiction
Maybe I am just too (rhymes with) banally attentive because this ambiguity drives me CRAZY! I especially hate it when diets tell you to eat limited amounts of fruits and lots of vegetables.
Quick pop quiz, are these vegetables?
- Eggplant
- Tomato
- Butternut Squash
- Bell Pepper
- String Bean
- Avocado
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope and NOPE!
They are all fruits!
Why can’t our culinary definition of these things be the same as the botanical one? Why does a fruit have to be sweet?
Now, do you want to get even weirder? Did you know that a strawberry isn’t technically a fruit? For that matter, neither is an apple or a pear. They are “accessory fruits”. Is that like a handbag, or maybe a scarf? The things we call the seeds of those “fruits”(?!?!) are actually the fruit in a botanical sense.
What about nuts and seeds. Well, technically they are all fruit.
Hmmm.
Ok.
What about legumes?
You know, beans and peas.
Duh.
Fruit.
Yep
.
.
.
Clearly a fruit.
So then, what is a vegetable? Leafy greens. Celery. Roots like potatoes and carrots. Asparagus. Bean sprouts. etc.
But wait. Isn’t a regular potato a bad “white” “processed” starch? Argh.
I leave you with this. Eat your fruits and accessory fruits and some of those greens and roots too. Don’t obsess too much over what’s a fruit or a vegetable or you’ll just drive yourself a little bit crazy. If it’s a plant part that you can recognize it has to be 100% better than anything that comes processed in a box.
