this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
55 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
44275 readers
734 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Kinda related, I studied in Spain for a semester. Was taking with my fellow American roommate about the debate of if a tomato is a fruit or vegetable. Our host mom's daughter's boyfriend (Cuban, fwiw) overheard, and we told him about the "controversy" in the US but all 3 of us agreed it was a fruit. Host mom overheard us and asked what we were talking about, and the Cuban told her. "Well yeah, of course it's a vegetable"
I couldn't understand every word but when I could tell they were arguing about some vegetables having seeds or something like that I knew I spread something.
You're both right. It's important to note that this classification only applies to botany. Botanically, it's a fruit. Just like a peanut is botanically a bean.
Culinarally, tomatoes are a vegetable.
And for the purposes of tariffs, taxes, and customs, according to Nix v Hedden, it's a vegetable.
There are many ways to classify an item. This just happens to cross boundaries depending on context.
All fruits are vegetables, not all vegetables are fruits. All edible plant matter is vegetable. Fruits are, well, the fruit of a plant.
Fruits are the reproductive organs of plants designed to be eaten by other animals in order to spread their seeds.
Right, the fruit of the plant is what we consider fruit.
You'd be surprised how little that definition helps when someone insists a tomato is not a fruit.
I mean, they're clearly thinking about sweet versus not sweet. The discussion isn't really about what a tomato is and isn't, it's about what the words mean and how they're using them. There's no doubt about what a tomato is. Everyone has a clear understanding about it. It's just that people mean different things when they say it is/isn't a fruit. People saying it isn't a fruit say that because it isn't sweet. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But if they're disagreeing that a tomato is the fruit of a tomato plant then they're being foolish. And I don't think anyone is saying that.
Whenever people are arguing about this it's just so exhausting because they'll hear something like "a tomato is a fruit" or that "all fruits are vegetables" and rather than try to seek understanding about how the other party is using the words they just dig their heels in and insist that's wrong. When the whole reason they're upset is because they're picturing their own usage of the terms and imagining the other person saying a tomato is that.
People think of fruits as having to be sweet and tomatoes are acidic and are used like non-fruit vegetables in cooking so I can see why someone who hasn't thought about botanical definitions would think that way.
That's kinda strange, I was taught in school that tomato was a fruit so that's what I always went with. As to why, I honestly have no idea and wouldn't be able to argue
Botanically fruit is basically defined as anything with a seed in it.
Although I think botanically vegetable is defined as edible plant matter, so strictly speaking all fruits are vegetables but not all vegetables are fruits.