TOMATOES: Fruit or Vegetable?
 

So, the US Supreme Court decided that tomatoes were in fact a vegetable (because they have nothing better to do, right?), though technically it should be classified as a fruit...

My roommate says it's a vegetable because it's not sweet and all fruit is either sweet or sour but I argue with her saying it's a fruit (though I still think it's a vegetable) because it's got seeds and grows like a berry would.

What do you think?

I would say it's a fruit. To me tomatoes have a sweetness to them, especially cherry tomatoes. Their having seeds and all is also a good reason though some vegetables (say cucumbers) also have seeds in them, so it doesn't necessarily make it a fruit.

The only thing I can say that would make me not classify it as a fruit is the fact that we usually cook it with other vegetables, but that doesn't have anything to do with its nature.

However, I haven't seen the reasons they used to classify it as such and am not an expert in florae, so this is just an opinion.

If your roommate thinks tomatoes aren't sweet they've been eating shitty tomatoes for their entire life.

Scientifically speaking tomatoes are fruit, and so are cucumbers, for that matter.

Additionally, do you have a link to this? Why are the courts wasting their time on something like that, first of all, and second of all who do they think they are to ignore the entire system of classification that botany uses to classify plants?

Link.

Biologically, tomatoes are a fruit, but for the most part in cooking, it is used like a vegetable.

It so happens that cucumbers are botanically speaking fruits, but that they are reffered to as vegetables when it comes to the culinary arts, as tomatoes sometimes are. As the term vegetable is not a botanical term, there is no problem in calling them both fruit and vegetable.

Cf. this article.

That's a bit like calling whales fish. It's wrong, and it's dumb.

I'd say it's more along the lines of calling whales sea-dwelling creatures since all fruits can be classified as vegetables if we use the word vegetable in it's most general sense.

See here.

Edit:

It also makes sense when speaking about the nutritional values of certain foods.

That can't apply here because it's a question of calling them a fruit or a vegetable. If you were using the most general sense of the word vegetable (describing everything in the entire plant kingdom) then its status as a "vegetable" is already confirmed, and it would be both a fruit and. In that case, why even bother to ask the question?

Is a puppy a dog or is it a mammal?

It's vegetable. Why? Because in my mind, anything that isn't a grape and doesn't grow on trees is a vegetable. I don't care what technicalities you throw at me. Can I easily eat it and enjoy the taste all by itself? No? I have to either put it on a sandwich or make it into a paste? Then it's a vegetable.

Well then, instead of calling a carrot a vegetable, start calling it a root. And instead of calling an onion a vegetable, start calling it a bulb. And calling brocolli a flower. And so on.

Of course, that complicates things, but that seems to be the way you want it.

I like lots of so-called vegetables by themselves. =(

The way I want it is for the US supreme court to stop, for whatever reason, arbitrarily deciding what are fruits and what are vegetables. I didn't bother to read since all Divest linked was a stupid wiki entry, but I can't imagine what reason they would have for even making such a ridiculous ruling.

It had something to do with taxing it as a fruit or a vegetable, or something.

@ Diss: here's the specific part of it that refers to this:

BTW, all I was trying to say is that it makes sense when we use the term vegetable for certain fruits because of the way we use them in meals. Classification as a vegetable for botanical or "scientific" purposes is useless since all plants and all parts of plants can be referred to for this purpose as vegetables.

Yeah, I get that. I just thought the whole concept of the court ruling was a bit ridiculous, but that was before reading that. The way that Divest mentioned it in his original post made me think that it was a recent development, not something that happened over a century ago.

For the longest time I've always seen tomatoes as a vegetable. I can definetely agree with the fact that it is more of a fruit than a vegetable.

I think tomatoes will always be considered a vegetable to the general public.

I remember watching an episode of Dragon's Den, its a really great show here in canada if nobody has ever seen it before. One of the products they tried to get people to invest their money with was a type of tomato jam. It was even endorsed by the prime minister of canada's top chef.

They tried to market the idea of tomato being a fruit and a lot of the investors said that the jam was actually fairly good and actually very sweet. They decided to not invest their money into it because they felt like that they would have to put in money to re-educate everybody that a tomato is an actual fruit and not a vegetable in which most people were comfortable with.

They didn't invest to their business after all but they still admitted it was a very tasty product. Even though in botanical terms the tomato is more like a fruit than a vegetable, but I'm still in that mind frame that when I look at a tomato I will always see it as more of vegetable.

It is definitely a fruit, but I sometimes think of it as a vegetable due to societal programming.

Either way, I think they taste wretched, so it is a moot point for me.

I don't know exactly how it works, but i've heard fruit is defined by the location of the seeds within the food itself. Tomatoes are classified as a fruit because the seeds are arranged in a formation spreading outwards from the core of the object, similar to apples and pears. I've also been told that a fruit is classified by the seeds being located inside the outer most membrane of the object.

I could be wrong on this, but that's a shakey account of what i've been told.

I've always been a big fan of the old saying, "Knowledge is knowing that Tomatoes are fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put them in a fruit salad."

Tomatoes taste fine as they are and are sweet enough to be eaten like a fruit when vine-ripened in the right season. I prefer sticking to the notion that they are biologically and botanically, a fruit.

However from their culinary uses, I will stick them in the "vegetables" section on my shopping list when I go out for groceries, since they mainly go in main/side dishes of the meal.

I'm a more literal person though, I'll stick them in the "edibles" portion of the grand scale of things and leave them at that. I'm not too picky about food so long it tastes good. And to me, a well-grown tomato is just as good as any other fruit/vegetable out there.

Well, basically, it's a fruit, as something produced by a plant to bear their seeds. Biological and botanical terms claim it so.

But if the term of fruit means something eaten as a dessert (like apples, pears, peaches), then tomatoes are included into vegetables (since they are cooked as vegetables and USUALLY produce non-sweet cuisine). Confusing heh?

You may ask the same question for RHUBARBS.

ADDITIONAL SPAM: Why do threads about tomatoes mushroom rapidly?

Me & a friend argued about this for a long time.

As a cook, I treat it as a veggie. I don't make tomato smoothies & I never made a tomato pie. Sauces & soups are done most often with veggies and the tomato is treated like a veggie in food prep.

How you cook it has no bearing on how it's classified, a tomato is a fruit and that's that. Anyway, don't you people ever have savoury apple sauce or red onion jam or chilled fruit soup? The days of vegatables=savoury, fruit=sweet are long, long dead in the world outside the canned goods aisle. Wake up and smell the 21st century.

Addendum: What's the quickest way to turn a fruit into a vegatable?

AIDS.

It's a savory fruit. Nothing more, nothing less. I'd never even known this was an issue.

"Strawberry".

Don't throw those technicalities at him!

Botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit. A fruit is defined as the ripened, fleshy ovary of any plant that produces seeds. A vegetable, on the other hand, is any edible part of a plant that's harvested for eating, whether it's the leaves, stems, roots or seed pods. It's a sort of "square/rectangle" relationship; a fruit could be a vegetable, but a vegetable isn't a fruit.

Tomatoes are a fruit. They're the ripened ovaries of the tomato plant. Compare this to, say, spinach which is a leaf, or peas, which aren't a fruit but are the seeds of the fruit, in this case, the pod.

People easily confuse the distinction between fruit and vegetable because the lines aren't so cleanly drawn in cooking. Take rhubarb: we only eat the stalk of the rhubarb plant, so it's a vegetable by definition. But because it's most often used to make sweet pies, many people will list it among fruit flavorings.

On the other hand, cucumbers, as others have mentioned, are fruits. They're fleshy seed carriers. But they're not very sweet and don't go well in pastries. They're mostly fried , eaten raw, or turned into pickles. So people regard them as veggies.

FUN TOMATO-THEMED TRIVIA: During Ronald Reagan's presidency, the nutritional value of school lunches came under scrutiny. Many expert dieticians felt students were being fed junk and that school lunches often failed to provide the four basic food groups.

Addressing growing concerns, Reagan spoke at a press conference, testifying his certainty that school lunches met every child's nutritional needs. The address was going fine until he informed the public that the daily fruits and vegetables recommendation was met by ketchup. Because tomatoes are fruits, Reagan felt that ketchup was nutritionally sound.

This outraged parents and educators for two reasons: ketchup is clearly not an adequate source of nutrition; Reagan insisted that ketchup was a vegetable. I'm not even joking. This is true, I was alive to hear it. The media mocked Reagan for several months and he was forced to accept that students needed better variety in their meals.

Mushrooms are a fungus, you moron.

You're the moron.

What I mean is that out of nowhere, topics about tomatoes appear like mushrooms growing in rainy season, doorknob.

Do we seriously have to start appending humorous statements with THIS IS A JOKE, YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO MAKE LAUGHTER?

When Ozma's involved, it often helps, yes.

Why is there an opinion poll about a subject with a factual answer. It's not even a debatable subject, your country is a an idiot for classifying as something it's not, but it doesn't change anything. This thread baffles me.I don't think I have met anyone, anywhere that considers rhubarb a fruit.

First off, and I've said it earlier, EVERY fruit is a vegetable. Had you read Crash's post a bit more closely (or the rest of the thread for that matter) you would have seen that. So no, their country isn't an 'idiot' for defining the tomato as a vegetable for certain purposes.

Are green beans a fruit or a vegetable??? What about squash??? You'll find that they fit the definition for both, but you'll rarely hear someone speak of green beans as fruits.

I've read the thread and you've been flailing abount with a barely sensical argument. You seem to keep bringing in the term vegetable out of context in which it is normally used and which it is being used in the opening post of this thread. If the OP was written on the same wavelength as you are it would make even less sense.

To the matter of the court settlement, they're idiotic for classifying the tomato as a vegetable and NOT a fruit. That doesn't make sense.

I'll admit that as far as the court settlement goes, you've got a point, defining it as not being a fruit is a bit ludicrous.

However, your saying that my argument doesn't have a sense as to the definition of the term vegetable I don't agree with. Get a dictionnary. Look it up. Any comestible part of a plant can be called a vegetable. Alternatively, any plant or part of it can be considered a vegetable. Fruits fall into both of these categories. How does bringing this to light not make any sense?

I'm not talking about definition, I'm talking about context. Get a dictionary. Look it up.

Oh come off it.

The poll is asking whether people perceive the tomato as a fruit or a vegetable. Though it doesn't explicitly state this, the implication is rather obvious to anyone who isn't hell-bent on going by verbatim. The overlying factuality of the matter is beside the point of the poll.

Though the tomato is indeed a fruit, it is commonly treated as a vegetable because it is savory, not sweet. It's a matter of perceptions. The rest of the argument is just belaboring fact and is nothing but pedantry.

Sprinkle some sugar on a tomato wedge sometime. You'll find that the tomato tastes much better. That's about the only thing that can be offered upon the discussion by now.

(Conversely, putting salt on cantaloupe is an equal improvement in flavor.)

I'm still baffled at how you guys have never had a good sweet tomato in your entire lives.

Not only is the tomato a fruit, but it's a berry. So are cucumbers and squashes.

Strawberries are not true berries (the seeds are on the outside) and neither are raspberries (they're cluster fruits).

This is why context is important. No one cares what botanists think, that's why people still get poison ivy all the time.

I actually have, Diss.

Thing is, I'm actually not fond of tomatoes at all. I don't mind the cherry tomatoes because those tend to be quite sweet. But the big, drippy, squishy ones aren't to my liking.

I find that I can only tolerate them when sprinkled with sugar.

Just drink ketchup then you tomato-hating faggotface.

I'm not a fan of ketchup either. Not even those fancy dijon ketchups.

Crash: Not even with a Kraft Dinner? I guess you wouldn't want to get it on your new Chesterfield.

...or ottoman.

Anyone who doesn't get the reference is a jerk

Can't agree more. That's what I've been dying to tell anyone around me, but hell, they just don't give shit to botany ^^

But seriously, to fight over a silly thing as a tomato :eagletear:

I'm impressed.:eagletear:

I call tomatoes vegetables and pretty much everyone in Sweden does, but I guess it is true that it is a fruit. I won't stop calling it a vegetable though!

Kraft dinner is another matter entirely, Mo0. Would you put dijon ketchup on your prewrapped sausages, though? OR prewrapped bacon, if it existed, which it doesn't, but can you blame them?

I suppose I should clarify my previous statements about fruits and vegetables. To me, a fruit is something you enjoy by itself. Sure, you can toss it into a fruit salad, or sometimes put it in a pie, but other than that, it doesn't really belong anywhere except in your mouth by itself. You can even coat it in caramel, but the best part is the fruit itself. This is why tomatoes are not a fruit, to me.

Vegetables (such as tomatoes) are often and regularly used as additions to something else. Carrots, celery, and broccoli, while I enjoy them by themselves on occasion, are USUALLY accompanied by some kind of dip - ranch, peanut butter, etc. While I may occasionally be in the mood for a raw carrot, the majority of people the majority of the time prefer it with something else, or in a salad, soup or stew. This is generally not so with fruits. I don't often find strawberries being dipped in ranch, only sometimes coated with chocolate - which, I might add, can also stand on its own. Ranch, however, is not something most people eat all by itself.

It's a vague line to most people, but to me, it's clear cut. Tomatoes and cucumbers are vegetables.

I eat cucumber by itself all the time. http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...icons/cool.gif

Fruit in the English sense of the word, vegetable according to the German definition of "Gemüse" (=vegetable). Very confusing indeed.

It's a fruitetable

I used to call it a vegetable but lately I've been calling it a fruit.

So is chocolate a fruit to you? Salad? Bagels?

Chocolate doesn't come out of the ground the way it's presented to you in edible form, spritey. Nor does salad. Or bagels. They're also made up of several ingredients, but I guess that wasn't an obvious enough stipulation, I must state it outright, GOTTA GO EDIT BRB.

Right or wrong, I really can't think of a tomato as anything other than a vegetable...

I know it's a fruit cuz that's my field of work.

On the surface it is more like a veggie.

When you cook it, it 's more like a veggie. It's no longer sweet when you cook'em[or heat'em]. There's seeds in them [like the bell peppers too] but I don't think that makes it a fruit.

Some people want to call it veggie becuz it's more popular sounding.