tomatoes

I have a raging argument going with a friend. She says tomatoes are vegetables. I say they are fruit.
I KNOW they are fruit.
Could severl intelligent beings out there send me emails that say tomatoes are fruit? (Only if you really mean it)
Thanks
BgBearB@aol.com

The tomato is a fruit. Why?

A fruit.

In the eyes of botanists they are a fruit.
In the eyes of the supreme court they are a vegetable

See NIX v. HEDDEN, 149 U.S. 304 (1893)

I don’t know why it is tomatoes that always get singled out as if they are some sort of anomaly; there are a whole range of other ‘vegetables’ that are actually fruits in the botanical sense.

Cucumbers, Capsicums, Pumpkins, Aubergines, Zucchini, Okra, Sweetcorn, peas and beans for example.

Whereas Rhubarb is a vegetable* that is used as a fruit.

*Although in botany, the term ‘vegetable’ encompasses plant matter generally and includes fruits.

According to the botanical definition, the tomato is a fruit because it contains seeds. According to the culinary definition, it is a vegetable because it is not sweet, is typically served as part of the main course rather than as dessert, and is often served cooked.

Other botanical fruits that are commonly considered vegetables are green and red peppers, eggplant, string beans, snow peas, okra, pumpkins, squash, and zucchini.

It’s both.

A vegetable is the edible part of a plant.

A subclass of vegetable, fruits are edible parts of plants which contain seeds.

A more general term, fruiting body, contains seeds or spores, but may not be edible.

Please resume pelting each other with tomatoes, eggplants, and mushrooms.

–Nott “A City Chemist once identified shreds of my self-destructing well pump as “fruiting bodies” of a fungus. Imagination in government is not dead.”

Isn’t corn in the grass family? And aren’t beans in the legume family?

Yes and yes, but the structure that you eat (of both) is the fruit.

:confused: I don’t see what that has to with it. They’re all plants.

Corn kernels (the individual grains) are both fruit and seed. Beans are seeds, the pod is the fruit.

Botanically, the fruit develops from the ovary, which is a part of the pistil or female part of the flower. The ovary contains ovules, which develop into seeds. Hence, any flowering plant can bear fruit, which need not be edible.

Funny, I was just sitting here eating a tomato and wishing I had a real tomato…sun ripened fresh from the garden, or better yet, sitting in the garden. These store bought tomatoes are just so unsatisfying.

Can you tell I’m seriously in the throes of spring fever?

I had a tomato from Italy, why did it taste
so much better than one from the
grocers here in the states?

Now that I’m back in the States
I want a tomato out of Italy again,
they have more taste and are
not bland.

Any tomato experts have an
idea for me?

Scalia is an idiot, but at least he would have looked it up in Webster’s and gotten it right.

They breed them to be red and durable, not to taste good. I can’t even stand to eat American tomatoes. Go to your fancy gourmet supermarket and buy the expensive ones. They’re still not as good though.

Picky picky picky; Mangetout(Snow) peas and French beans then.

Colibri has the correct answer. It is a fruit only in the botanical sense, like a green pepper and a zuchinni are fruits. In the culinary sense it is a vegetable like the green pepper and the zuchinni are vegetables. So the correct answer is: whatever you classify a green pepper, a zuchinni, etc., that is what a tomato is. Since I am not a botanist but rather a consumer, I clasify it in my kitchen as a vegetable.

As long as we’re being picky about fruit vs vegetable, might as well get it right. Being from a part of the world where the avocado is considered to be a dessert fruit (try some avocado ice cream sometime, you’ll like it) and bananas are put into stew, I tend to ignore any of the “normal” or culinary fruit/vegetable distinctions and operate solely by botanical definitions.

Here’s one for you: Potatoes (tubers) are stems; sweet potatoes are roots.

JUt to belabor this a bit more, the question, “Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable,” has as much validity as any of the following:

Is the beet a root or a vegetable?
Is spinach a leaf or a vegetable?
Is celery a stem or a vegetable?
Is an artichoke a flower or a vegetable?

Probably because of the phrase “fruits and vegetables” we seem to think of the two categories as being mutually exclusive. They are not, but instead overlap. Some fruits are also vegetables; some are not. Some vegetables are fruits; some are not. Some flowers are vegetables; many are not.

Colibri, the problem with words is that they have different meanings depending on the field / context. The words fruit and vegetable do not have universal meanings. In a botanical sense the tomato is a fruit just like a zuchinni is a fruit.

But in the usual home (culinary) sense, the tomato is not a fruit, it is a vegetable like the zuchinni also.

I forget what it’s called but there is a name for the trick of using the same word with different meanings in the same argument.

A person can be a resident in the USA for certain purposes (for example taxes) and not for other (for example INS). The correct answer to the question “Is he a resident?” may be “depends”.

To the unqualified question “Is the tomato a fruit” the correct answer is “depends”. In a botanical sense, yes it is, but in a culinary/nutritional sense the correct answer is NO.

To the unqualified question “Is the tomato a vegetable?” the correct answer is always yes because it is a vegetable in the biological sense and in the culinary sense – even though the word has different meaning in both cases.