TOMATOES: Fruit or Vegetable?

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.

Originally Posted by Ozma

ADDITIONAL SPAM: Why do threads about tomatoes mushroom rapidly?

Mushrooms are a fungus, you moron.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Diss

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

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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

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