I got a question for you smart CPFers who know everything....

Why is a Tomato considered a fruit?

Fruit or vegetable?

Tomato fruit Botanically speaking a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant, i.e. a fruit. However, from a culinary perspective the tomato is typically served as a meal, or part of a main course of a meal, meaning that it would be considered a vegetable (a culinary term which has no botanical meaning). This argument has led to actual legal implications in the United States. In 1887, U.S. tariff laws which imposed a duty on vegetables but not on fruits caused the tomato's status to become a matter of legal importance. The U.S. Supreme Court settled this controversy in 1893, declaring that the tomato is a vegetable, along with cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas, using the popular definition which classifies vegetables by use, that they are generally served with dinner and not dessert. The case is known as Nix v. Hedden.

In concordance with this classification, the tomato has been proposed as the state vegetable of New Jersey.

In Europe, however, the tomato is classifed (correctly, botanically speaking) as a fruit.

I think it is due the its high vitamin C content.

Funny you should ask that right now. A month ago I couldn't have told you but since then my nephew asked his mom who then asked me.

From everything I have read since, the fruit/vegetable distinction is *not* definitive. They both have imprecise meanings unless you are referring to the animal/vegetable/mineral use of vegetable and that gets into a whole different set of arguments.

So, in a general kind of way, fruits are considered to be the seeds with surrounding fleshy tissue, AKA ovary, while a vegetable is more generally the roots or leaves.

This puts the tomato, along with peppers and some other things in with the fruits.

But some definitions also specify that fruits are sweet which would leave out peppers and make tomatoes even more suspect.

Added: Dang! rycen beat me to it.

Ok I am not that smart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato

Thanks guys! Now I'm more confused than ever. So some people say its a fruit, some say its a vegetable, some say its a berry!



I'll never know now.

Botanically, a tomato is a fruit. A berry is simply a type of fruit. Vegetables are fruits too.

From an anthropocentric point of view, though... Why is an avocado a vegetable in most of the world, but in Brazil they consider it a "fruit" and make ice-cream, desserts, and drinks out of it (they're all tasty, BTW)?

You say tomato I say tomayto!

It's actually a fish:-

"Whatever the method, genetic engineering is a process of trial and error, and most attempts to create a viable result are unsuccessful. When it works, the effects can be quite bizarre: a fish gene in a tomato, so it can withstand colder temperatures and not spoil as quickly."

source

Chilli ice cream is rather nice

It's poison, don't eat it!!!! =

Well thats what people used to think anyway.

My wife just read or heard that you get much more value from eating a spoonful of tomato sauce than a whole raw tomato. (or something like that) I think it has to do with the new anitoxidant discovery Lycopene.

Although Astaxanthin is suppose the be the most powerful one to fight free radicals right now.

That's about the extent of my 'smarts' on tomatos lol

I was just reading something along those lines LifeNRA

"So let's change the subject and talk about something less controversial, shall we? Something red and shiny and sexy: the tomato.

Can you imagine Italian cuisine without the tomato? What, no pizza, no spaghetti Bolognese, add to that no ketchup and what would you feed the kids?

Well in the long history of the Italian peninsula, it is only in the last 400 years or so that the tomato got onto the menu. The Romans conquered much of Europe with only the olive and the grape, they wouldn't have known a tomato if they fell over one. It was only after European conquest of the Americas that the tomato made its way to the Mediterranean. The tomato was a new technology, and it struggled for acceptance. If the Pope had had his way, that's how it would have stayed. He tried to ban these 'love apples', as they were known to 'inflame the passions'.

Linnaeus, that great Swedish namer of plants, was pretty circumspect too when he called it Lycopersicon esculentum, the edible wolf-peach. At least he conceded it was edible. The newly independent Americans were quite convinced that the 'tomayto' was poisonous. In fact, the fruit is the only part of the plant not laden with toxic alkaloids. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that a brave individual, Robert Johnson, sat on the steps of the Salem, New Jersey, courthouse in the 1820s with a bag of tomatoes. A crowd assembled. The band played. The Death March hung in the air. Johnson then proceeded to eat the tomatoes. Based on the lack of any symptoms of poisoning, the tomato became accepted as a part of the American diet. It has now risen to become the favourite vegetable in the United States, no mean feat for a fruit."


source

I always heard that anything with seeds is technically a fruit.


"fruit: fleshy, seed-bearing part of a plant used as food."


Who knows....

Eric




"Corrected to state seeds in general and not necessarily on the inside."

Eric_M said:

I always heard that anything with seeds on the inside is technically a fruit.


"fruit: fleshy, seed-bearing part of a plant used as food."


Who knows....

Eric

Click to expand...

Cucumbers, okra, squash, eggplant, and that is waht I thought of in 20 seconds!

CroMAGnet said:

My wife just read or heard that you get much more value from eating a spoonful of tomato sauce than a whole raw tomato. (or something like that) I think it has to do with the new anitoxidant discovery Lycopene.

Although Astaxanthin is suppose the be the most powerful one to fight free radicals right now.

That's about the extent of my 'smarts' on tomatos lol

Click to expand...

Yummmm. Catsup!

PoliceScannerMan said:

Cucumbers, okra, squash, eggplant, and that is waht I thought of in 20 seconds!

Click to expand...

All "technically" fruits:

Q: Is a cucumber a fruit or a vegetable?
A: It is technically a fruit. From a botanical perspective, a fruit is the mature ovary of a plant, such as an apple, melon, cucumber, or tomato. From the common, every day "grocery store perspective," we tend to use the word fruit with respect to fruits eaten fresh as desserts - apples, peaches, cherries, etc. - and not to items cooked or used in salads. So, cucumbers tend to be lumped in with vegetables because of the way they are used (cooked and in salads), but botanists will call them fruits because they develop from the reproductive structures of plants. From the Cornell Department of Horticulture.

What about corn?? I love corn!

Corn is one of my favorites.

Did you know that each kernel of corn on a cob is a whole fruit? The corn kernel is a type of fruit called a caryopsis, which is a kind of fruit with a single seed. That is why we commonly think of a kernel of corn as a seed. Each corn fruit only has one seed. Also the seed coat is fused with the inner wall of the fruit so you can not separate the seed from the rest of the fruit. Finally, a caryopsis is dry and hard when the fruit is ripe.

Eric_M said:

I always heard that anything with seeds on the inside is technically a fruit.

Click to expand...

Cashew fruits have the seeds outside, so do strawberries (which are actually, compound fruits).

Must be seeds in general then.

Good point.

some of my best friends are fruits; I found out!


dcarch8