Whoa! Hold the phone! We didn’t say anything about granola bars! Your grey area accommodates a whole lot more snacks than I would ever have imagined would be invoked by the mention of “candy bar.”
And just for the record, don’t go giving out granola bars on Halloween. Unless you live in some insular neighborhood full of health nuts, I think a kid would be pretty pissed off.
You know how some folks get when you try to pass off an oatmeal raisin as a chocolate chip.
Exactly. Vegetable is not a botanical term.
Tomatoes are vegetables.
It’s not a bar it’s a cup. But it doesn’t matter, if someone asks me if I’d like a candy bar and it turns out to be a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup I wouldn’t care in the least. If I offered someone a Peanut Butter Cup and they said it was a bar I’d just suggest they join the Straight Dope. I mean really now, if there’s a subject you can’t get me to argue about then it’s definitely the epitome of irrelevance.
I polled my classes today on the subject. The results were 62 that Reese’s are a candy bar, 81 that they weren’t. Then every class asked if I had any that I was giving out. 
If you had had some to give out, they’d have said they were whichever one you wanted them to be.
We seem to have cooled down on the candy bar questions. Should we argue over whether or not the United States Court of International Trade should have decided that the X-Men are not human?
I am speechless at the fact that this is a genuinely open question.
I answered “no” but now I have to be aware that many people don’t use the language the same way I do in this regard!
Strawberries aren’t a fruit, in the botanical sense: The things that people think of as the seeds are the real botanical fruits. The red juicy part is a highly-modified stem.
Hibiscus may only be used in teas, but then, rhubarb is mostly only used in pies and related confections. I’ve never heard of anyone just munching down on a stalk of raw rhubarb. So limited usefulness clearly isn’t a criterion at work here.
And while we’re at it on things used in pies, sweet potatoes are also used to make sweet pies. So it seems to me that they’re just as much a fruit as rhubarb is.
If I asked my wife to buy a candy bar she knows that I prefer Reese’s PB Cups. The shape doesn’t matter. It’s a candy bar. imho
I’d say candy for jelly beans, peppermint disks or other hard candy, lifesavers, and Starburst.
I would say it is not a candy bar because it is not a bar. I would also say it is acceptable to refer to it as such anyway.
“Fruit” is a botanical term, and “vegetable” seems to mean “edible plant part that’s not fruit”, so doesn’t vegetable get botanicalness by the transitive property of Defining Stuff by Exclusion?
Also, not a bar. But whatever floats your boat.
Wrong.
AIUI, hibiscus is often tucked behind the ear – it looks decorative but is actually functional, as a means of pest/parasite control. Not a culinary use, but a valuable use nonetheless.
Count me as another who knows that this is the way things are.
Oh, and soup vs. stew is easy. If you can put it on a plate instead of a bowl, it’s stew.
I am kind of surprised that no one has mentioned that peanuts (such as they make the peanut butter in peanut butter cups from) are not a nut.
Why? It’s not relevant to the question (plus it’s fairly common knowledge–at least around here.)
So those who say it’s not a bar because it’s not shaped like a bar must not dial a phone since the numbers are no longer in a circular configuration.
The divisions between fruits and vegetables are not very relevant to the question either. Before long, this thread will probably drift into a debate about some random TV show or something.
Ah. :smack: Already forgot that the fruit-vegetable discussion was part of this topic. Hard to keep track of what thread has what.