Fruit and Vegetables

Potato, Potatah, Tomato or Tomatah…does it really matter?  What we do know is that fruits and vegetables provide an enormous amount of vitamins and minerals. Nutritionally we need them daily in order to maintain our healthy body.

What are the differences between the fruit and the vegetable? Some may say “it is really not that important” and others may simple say “I don’t know”. Since starting this article I have heard these definitions:

• Fruits are sweeter than vegetables.
• Fruits grow on trees and vegetables grow on plants and bushes.
• Fruits have seeds and vegetables do not.
• Fruits grow from flowers.
• Most vegetables are green and fruits are multi-colored as well as green.

All these responses are partially right. It is true that some fruits are sweet. Some fruits grow on trees, all fruits do have seeds, some fruits are green and all fruits start as flowers but so do some vegetables. So, lets take a look at vegetables. Some vegetables are sweet (carrots, beets); some vegetables are green and multi-colored and since eating customs differ from place to place, the edible part of the plant may be considered a fruit rather than a vegetable.

Many people refer to cucumbers, sweet peppers (most popular is the bell), squash (summer and zucchini), tomatoes, avocados, pumpkins and peapods as vegetables. But, in fact they are fruits. So, if the chef says it’s a vegetable, he’s the chef and it’s a vegetable.

Fruit:  The ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed bearing a flower. The name fruit is usually given to the fleshy part of a plant that has developed from a flower and has seeds. Fruits are not only attractive to look at; they are also delicious to eat. Most fruits add bulk to the diet and help in the process of digestion.

Vegetable:     There seems to be no scientific definition of a vegetable. Popular usage refers to any edible part of the plant we eat that is not a fruit. Because most of the vegetables are not sweet, we refer to non-sweet fruits as vegetables, such as: tomatoes, peppers, and squash. Yet we never refer to acidic fruits like lemons and limes as vegetables. The edible parts of the plant that we eat include the root (beets), the stems (asparagus), the leaves (fresh greens) and the flower buds (broccoli).

Now, lets add a little more confusion to this subject. Grains are small seeds, which make them a fruit, including those produced by cereal grasses such as wheat, barley, rice, or oats. Nuts are a hard-shelled, solid-textured, one-seeded fruit. Except the Peanut, which is, a legume: it’s a pod that splits into two sides when ripe. Some of the more common legumes are beans, lentils, peas and soybeans.

So, what have we learned? We have learned that all fruits are vegetables but not all vegetables are fruits unless the chef says so.