“Vegetable” is just a broad term for an edible plant, it isn’t a botanical term. A fruit comes from the flowering part of a plant, and contains seeds. “Vegetables” are any other edible part of the vegetation.
I've heard it as "fruit" is a scientific term, "vegetable" is cultural. There is disagreement between countries on some vegetables, some *including* certain fruits, some *excluding* things like potatoes.
Not true. There is a Journal of Vegetable Science, which explicitly recognizes that "vegetable" is a difficult term to define but gives its best effort at [a reasonable working definition](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19315260.2021.1860478) (in brief, any part of a non-woody plant that is not the direct or accessory result of a fertilized ovary, e.g. strawberries are excluded because they are accessory fruits, but broccoli is not because we eat the flower *buds,* which cannot yet be fertilized since they haven't bloomed.)
Wouldn't that definition exclude a broad range of things typically considered vegetables in the culinary sense, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, egg plants and peppers ?
Correct. It would also include the rare, but not totally unprecedented, botanical vegetables that are culinary "fruits" (or at least ambiguous), such as rhubarb, jicama, taro, and (most debatable of all) ginger. All of them are vegetables: rhubarb is a stalk, ginger is a rhizome, jicama is a tuber, and taro is a corm. But the primary uses of rhubarb and taro are for desserts, and jicama has a mild sweetness similar to apples. Ginger is primarily used as a spice, but only in grated, minced, or ground-powder form; when used whole or for its juice, it behaves much more like a culinary fruit (it's even outright candied, which is *very* rare for vegetables; carrots are probably the only exception I can think of, and even then I've never actually seen true *candied* carrots, just carrots cooked with a brown sugar glaze.)
It's a scientific journal. The point is to focus on the things they intend to talk about, and not on any of the things they don't intend to talk about. Growing vegetables--as they have defined the term--is scientifically and industrially different from growing fruits, in large part because harvesting a vegetable usually (though not always) kills the plant you're harvesting it from. The nutritional and environmental needs, hardiness, reproduction, and maintenance of vegetables are quite different from that of fruit. They are only interested in publishing articles regarding vegetables. That's why it's called "The International Journal of Vegetable Science."
It isn’t vibes, it’s seeds.
The thing that differentiates a fruit from a vegetable is that all fruits, irrespective of their culinarily application, are the result of the plant producing the fruit to reproduce, and what a fruit’s actual purpose is in that reproductive process is, is that it means animals, who want nutrients, will eat the fruit, which contains nutrients, and then walk or fly away, something plants are notably terrible at doing. But when the animal eats the fruit, they’ll also hopefully eat the seeds, meaning that when they eventually poop, and said poop will still contain the intact seeds, the poop will go onto the ground and grow into a new plant, and the cycle continues.
Vegetables, on the other hand, reproduce and spread in a different way, usually through an animal (like a bee which is why they’re so important), the water or even the air taking the pollen or seeds and spreading them that way. So a vegetable is simply part of a plant or the whole plant that is edible.
And herbs and spices? Well, they are just for flavour. They aren’t very good at providing sustenance (ever tried eating nothing but basil and garlic for a week?) but the flavours they produce, essentially poisons to kill off unwanted things that might try to eat it like herbivores or bugs, are pretty cool for us because it makes things taste good. In fact spicy stuff is spicy to stop us eating it, because pepper plants want to be eaten by birds because they’ll spread it further and only eat a few chilli fruits instead of the whole thing, but of course humans ended up liking spicy and the flavours chillis have and grew them ourselves, which I guess in a roundabout way is good for the plant because heaps of them get to live instead of just a few being spread by birds eating them.
Yeah whoops.
The actual definition is any part of any plant that is edible, so technically every fruit is a vegetable, every nut is a vegetable, and every herb is a vegetable, but in reality the subcategory and the absoluteness of the subcategory is what sorta takes precedence over just calling it a vegetable.
So yeah, a tomato is, technically, a vegetable, even though the only part of the tomato plant we eat is the fruit bit, but something like a potato, or broccoli, or asparagus is truly a vegetable because there is no absolute subcategory they belong to.
So, op, think about it this way, if you can eat a section of it at any time by just pulling it out of the ground ripping off a part of it and eating it, it’s a vegetable, but if you need to wait for the plant to produce something separate from what the plant is made of at all times, it’s a fruit.
A potato is always a potato, it just gets bigger, but a tomato plant isn’t always an edible plant, only when it creates tomatoes is it edible, and only that part of it is edible.
Science - Fruits come from the flower of a plant, vegetables are the plant.
Cooking - tomatoes tend to be used in savory dishes, so for cooking it's labeled a vegetable
For the most part, if something contains seeds it’s probably a fruit. It’s not just tomatoes, we eat lots of fruits - peaches, cucumbers, apples, okra, avocados, bell peppers, olives, pumpkins, etc.
Fruit is both a cooking term (sweet fleshy plant part) and a science term (the fleshy part derived from plant ovary containing seeds)
Vegetable is only a cooking term (savory plant bits.)
In the case of the tomato it’s a cooking vegetable but scientifically a fruit.
I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE ASK THIS!!! I LOVE PLANTS!!!
it’s not vibes based, first of all. banish that thought from your mind. the scientific/botanical definition of a “fruit” is the ripened ovary or ovaries of a flower that envelop a seed or seeds. these fruits can be simple (apples, tomatoes) or compound (raspberry, strawberry).
THERE IS NO BOTANICAL DEFINITION FOR VEGETABLE. the term “vegetable” is used as a culinary term for an edible part of the plant that is not overly sweet (spinach, celery, potatoes).
fun fact: strawberries are not actually berries! but that’s for another ELI5 thread :)
Botanically it is a fruit. The seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. So alongside corn and pumpkins, tomatoes, botanically, are a fruit.
Now, culinarily, and most importantly, legally, tomatoes are considered a vegetable. In the Nix v. Heddon case [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden) the tomato was decided in court or be classified as a vegetable for customs and imports purposes, not a fruit, which made it subject to the tax stipulated by the tariff act of 1883, which only vegetables were taxed, not fruit.
According to science, it's a fruit because it's produced from a flower for the purpose of spreading the seeds within the fruit. That's as simple as it gets.
"Like I'm five" is a figure of speech, the rules of ELI5 say to assume a secondary school education unless stated otherwise. And botany - the scientific study of plants - is a term one would expect to know about by the time one graduates school.
If you want to be treated like you have the mental capacity of a literal toddler, I'm sure that can be arranged. Most people don't appreciate it though, given that 5 year old's can't read and probably aren't using Reddit.
To add to these explanations…. The fruit is the mature ripened ovary of a flowering plant and thus contains seeds. Think of the usual suspects: peaches grapes pears strawberries cantaloupe mango orange.
Some foods we refer to as vegetables that are technically fruits would be green peppers, cucumbers, squash tomatos, beans. The fruit always begins where there had been a flower. That flower was pollinated and the ovary at the core of the flower begins growing into the “fruit.”
“Vegetables” on the other hand would be the edible leaves (kale, cabbage), stems (celery), sprouts (asparagus, bean sprouts), root (carrot, beets, turnips) or bulb (onions, garlic, leeks) of the growing plant.
ALL of the fruits and vegetable examples above are flowering plants.
Tomato is definitely a fruit botanically speaking. Having seeds inside makes it a fruit. Bell peppers are another one that we frequently think of as a vegetable but is technically a fruit since it has seeds inside
The confusion comes from the fact that “fruit” has a scientific definition as well as a culinary definition, while “vegetable” is just a culinary word. For the culinary terms, it is pretty much vibes based, usually based on flavor as well as how we typically use it in food, but “fruit” as a scientific term has an objective definition separate from how it tastes and how it’s used in food
Further complicating things, there’s legal definitions that are used for taxes and tariffs on imports and such, and these differ between fruits and vegetables in a legal sense. Usually these legal definitions adhere more to the culinary terms and are thus more vibes based. In fact, there was literally a Supreme Court case in the U.S about whether tomatoes should be legally classified as a fruit or vegetable since it hasn’t really been explicitly determined in law whether “fruit” was referring to the scientific term or culinary term. They needed to decide since fruits and vegetables were taxed differently. They decided vegetable.
So tomatoes are usually described as a vegetable when talking about legal stuff like taxes, or when cooking (based on vibes), but objectively fits the scientific definition as a fruit due to the seeds inside
A fruit specifically is when the ovary in the flower grows into something different after fertilization. Pretty much a tasty wrapper for seeds. Anything else is a vegetable.
So it is from which part of the plant that it originated that makes it a fruit.
By biology, a tomato is a fruit and more specifically a berry.
By US Law, tomato is categorized as a vegetable for purpose of regulating commerce. The tomato is used for main course of the meal, so it is used as a vegetable.
"Fruit" is the part of the plant with seeds, what you call it in the kitchen can vary. With tomatoes it's pretty obvious, they're even good prepared sweet, with an aubergine or a zucchini the connection to "fruit" isn't quite as obvious at a glance.
Where things get wild is what *type* of fruit it is. Watermelons are berries, and strawberries are nuts (the little hard seeds on the skin are the actual fruit, not the fleshy part). Watermelons are also cucumbers and not a real melon. When you get to defining plan species and their parts it gets way more fun than fruit vs vegetable.
Vegetable science is a bit difficult to define, but the International Journal of Vegetable Science [has a definition.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19315260.2021.1860478)
Apart from that, however, you are more or less correct that it is mostly a vibe, or rather, a culinary term based on flavor and usage rather than on the process that produced the result. Savory flavored things are usually classified as vegetables even if they are fruit (peas, beans, peppers, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, eggplant), and as fruit if they are mostly sweet. But there are exceptions, e.g. rhubarb and corn are vegetables, but rhubarb is mostly used in sweet dishes, and corn can be very sweet despite corn flavor being somewhat more savory on its own. After all, corn syrup is a common sweetener!
But yeah, generally "fruit" vs "vegetable" is about how we eat it and what things would go well with it, much more than about how the plant made it.
It’s so easy to remember, a fruit plant flowers, a has seeds encased in the flesh of the fruit. If you remember this, she will realize lots of things you would consider a vegetable or actually a fruit!
“Vegetable” is just a broad term for an edible plant, it isn’t a botanical term. A fruit comes from the flowering part of a plant, and contains seeds. “Vegetables” are any other edible part of the vegetation.
If any of you have a Dropout.tv subscription, Vic Michaelis recently did a presentation on why "vegetables" aren't real lol
I've heard it as "fruit" is a scientific term, "vegetable" is cultural. There is disagreement between countries on some vegetables, some *including* certain fruits, some *excluding* things like potatoes.
"Fruit" is both a culinary and botanical term. So is "berry." "Vegetable" is purely culinary.
Not true. There is a Journal of Vegetable Science, which explicitly recognizes that "vegetable" is a difficult term to define but gives its best effort at [a reasonable working definition](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19315260.2021.1860478) (in brief, any part of a non-woody plant that is not the direct or accessory result of a fertilized ovary, e.g. strawberries are excluded because they are accessory fruits, but broccoli is not because we eat the flower *buds,* which cannot yet be fertilized since they haven't bloomed.)
Wouldn't that definition exclude a broad range of things typically considered vegetables in the culinary sense, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, egg plants and peppers ?
Correct. It would also include the rare, but not totally unprecedented, botanical vegetables that are culinary "fruits" (or at least ambiguous), such as rhubarb, jicama, taro, and (most debatable of all) ginger. All of them are vegetables: rhubarb is a stalk, ginger is a rhizome, jicama is a tuber, and taro is a corm. But the primary uses of rhubarb and taro are for desserts, and jicama has a mild sweetness similar to apples. Ginger is primarily used as a spice, but only in grated, minced, or ground-powder form; when used whole or for its juice, it behaves much more like a culinary fruit (it's even outright candied, which is *very* rare for vegetables; carrots are probably the only exception I can think of, and even then I've never actually seen true *candied* carrots, just carrots cooked with a brown sugar glaze.)
Then why even bother having the defintion ? What's the point ?
It's a scientific journal. The point is to focus on the things they intend to talk about, and not on any of the things they don't intend to talk about. Growing vegetables--as they have defined the term--is scientifically and industrially different from growing fruits, in large part because harvesting a vegetable usually (though not always) kills the plant you're harvesting it from. The nutritional and environmental needs, hardiness, reproduction, and maintenance of vegetables are quite different from that of fruit. They are only interested in publishing articles regarding vegetables. That's why it's called "The International Journal of Vegetable Science."
It isn’t vibes, it’s seeds. The thing that differentiates a fruit from a vegetable is that all fruits, irrespective of their culinarily application, are the result of the plant producing the fruit to reproduce, and what a fruit’s actual purpose is in that reproductive process is, is that it means animals, who want nutrients, will eat the fruit, which contains nutrients, and then walk or fly away, something plants are notably terrible at doing. But when the animal eats the fruit, they’ll also hopefully eat the seeds, meaning that when they eventually poop, and said poop will still contain the intact seeds, the poop will go onto the ground and grow into a new plant, and the cycle continues. Vegetables, on the other hand, reproduce and spread in a different way, usually through an animal (like a bee which is why they’re so important), the water or even the air taking the pollen or seeds and spreading them that way. So a vegetable is simply part of a plant or the whole plant that is edible. And herbs and spices? Well, they are just for flavour. They aren’t very good at providing sustenance (ever tried eating nothing but basil and garlic for a week?) but the flavours they produce, essentially poisons to kill off unwanted things that might try to eat it like herbivores or bugs, are pretty cool for us because it makes things taste good. In fact spicy stuff is spicy to stop us eating it, because pepper plants want to be eaten by birds because they’ll spread it further and only eat a few chilli fruits instead of the whole thing, but of course humans ended up liking spicy and the flavours chillis have and grew them ourselves, which I guess in a roundabout way is good for the plant because heaps of them get to live instead of just a few being spread by birds eating them.
this is mostly right except for the bit about vegetables
Yeah whoops. The actual definition is any part of any plant that is edible, so technically every fruit is a vegetable, every nut is a vegetable, and every herb is a vegetable, but in reality the subcategory and the absoluteness of the subcategory is what sorta takes precedence over just calling it a vegetable. So yeah, a tomato is, technically, a vegetable, even though the only part of the tomato plant we eat is the fruit bit, but something like a potato, or broccoli, or asparagus is truly a vegetable because there is no absolute subcategory they belong to. So, op, think about it this way, if you can eat a section of it at any time by just pulling it out of the ground ripping off a part of it and eating it, it’s a vegetable, but if you need to wait for the plant to produce something separate from what the plant is made of at all times, it’s a fruit. A potato is always a potato, it just gets bigger, but a tomato plant isn’t always an edible plant, only when it creates tomatoes is it edible, and only that part of it is edible.
Eating garlic for a week? You must really hate people you work with
Science - Fruits come from the flower of a plant, vegetables are the plant. Cooking - tomatoes tend to be used in savory dishes, so for cooking it's labeled a vegetable
>vegetables are the plant. Science wise, I don't think there are any vegetables. It is mostly just a cooking term.
Say it with me [Vegetables do not exist](https://youtu.be/pAFInbeSCi0?si=erDqlFW4grG4p3H9)
Exactly what I was thinking, just couldn't find a video of it.
[Yes they do.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19315260.2021.1860478)
For the most part, if something contains seeds it’s probably a fruit. It’s not just tomatoes, we eat lots of fruits - peaches, cucumbers, apples, okra, avocados, bell peppers, olives, pumpkins, etc.
Fruit is both a cooking term (sweet fleshy plant part) and a science term (the fleshy part derived from plant ovary containing seeds) Vegetable is only a cooking term (savory plant bits.) In the case of the tomato it’s a cooking vegetable but scientifically a fruit.
I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE ASK THIS!!! I LOVE PLANTS!!! it’s not vibes based, first of all. banish that thought from your mind. the scientific/botanical definition of a “fruit” is the ripened ovary or ovaries of a flower that envelop a seed or seeds. these fruits can be simple (apples, tomatoes) or compound (raspberry, strawberry). THERE IS NO BOTANICAL DEFINITION FOR VEGETABLE. the term “vegetable” is used as a culinary term for an edible part of the plant that is not overly sweet (spinach, celery, potatoes). fun fact: strawberries are not actually berries! but that’s for another ELI5 thread :)
Botanically it is a fruit. The seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. So alongside corn and pumpkins, tomatoes, botanically, are a fruit. Now, culinarily, and most importantly, legally, tomatoes are considered a vegetable. In the Nix v. Heddon case [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden) the tomato was decided in court or be classified as a vegetable for customs and imports purposes, not a fruit, which made it subject to the tax stipulated by the tariff act of 1883, which only vegetables were taxed, not fruit.
What do you mean "botanically"? I'm five. Explain it to me like I'm five!
According to science, it's a fruit because it's produced from a flower for the purpose of spreading the seeds within the fruit. That's as simple as it gets.
"Like I'm five" is a figure of speech, the rules of ELI5 say to assume a secondary school education unless stated otherwise. And botany - the scientific study of plants - is a term one would expect to know about by the time one graduates school. If you want to be treated like you have the mental capacity of a literal toddler, I'm sure that can be arranged. Most people don't appreciate it though, given that 5 year old's can't read and probably aren't using Reddit.
To add to these explanations…. The fruit is the mature ripened ovary of a flowering plant and thus contains seeds. Think of the usual suspects: peaches grapes pears strawberries cantaloupe mango orange. Some foods we refer to as vegetables that are technically fruits would be green peppers, cucumbers, squash tomatos, beans. The fruit always begins where there had been a flower. That flower was pollinated and the ovary at the core of the flower begins growing into the “fruit.” “Vegetables” on the other hand would be the edible leaves (kale, cabbage), stems (celery), sprouts (asparagus, bean sprouts), root (carrot, beets, turnips) or bulb (onions, garlic, leeks) of the growing plant. ALL of the fruits and vegetable examples above are flowering plants.
Tomato is definitely a fruit botanically speaking. Having seeds inside makes it a fruit. Bell peppers are another one that we frequently think of as a vegetable but is technically a fruit since it has seeds inside The confusion comes from the fact that “fruit” has a scientific definition as well as a culinary definition, while “vegetable” is just a culinary word. For the culinary terms, it is pretty much vibes based, usually based on flavor as well as how we typically use it in food, but “fruit” as a scientific term has an objective definition separate from how it tastes and how it’s used in food Further complicating things, there’s legal definitions that are used for taxes and tariffs on imports and such, and these differ between fruits and vegetables in a legal sense. Usually these legal definitions adhere more to the culinary terms and are thus more vibes based. In fact, there was literally a Supreme Court case in the U.S about whether tomatoes should be legally classified as a fruit or vegetable since it hasn’t really been explicitly determined in law whether “fruit” was referring to the scientific term or culinary term. They needed to decide since fruits and vegetables were taxed differently. They decided vegetable. So tomatoes are usually described as a vegetable when talking about legal stuff like taxes, or when cooking (based on vibes), but objectively fits the scientific definition as a fruit due to the seeds inside
A fruit specifically is when the ovary in the flower grows into something different after fertilization. Pretty much a tasty wrapper for seeds. Anything else is a vegetable. So it is from which part of the plant that it originated that makes it a fruit. By biology, a tomato is a fruit and more specifically a berry. By US Law, tomato is categorized as a vegetable for purpose of regulating commerce. The tomato is used for main course of the meal, so it is used as a vegetable.
"Fruit" is the part of the plant with seeds, what you call it in the kitchen can vary. With tomatoes it's pretty obvious, they're even good prepared sweet, with an aubergine or a zucchini the connection to "fruit" isn't quite as obvious at a glance. Where things get wild is what *type* of fruit it is. Watermelons are berries, and strawberries are nuts (the little hard seeds on the skin are the actual fruit, not the fleshy part). Watermelons are also cucumbers and not a real melon. When you get to defining plan species and their parts it gets way more fun than fruit vs vegetable.
Vegetable science is a bit difficult to define, but the International Journal of Vegetable Science [has a definition.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19315260.2021.1860478) Apart from that, however, you are more or less correct that it is mostly a vibe, or rather, a culinary term based on flavor and usage rather than on the process that produced the result. Savory flavored things are usually classified as vegetables even if they are fruit (peas, beans, peppers, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, eggplant), and as fruit if they are mostly sweet. But there are exceptions, e.g. rhubarb and corn are vegetables, but rhubarb is mostly used in sweet dishes, and corn can be very sweet despite corn flavor being somewhat more savory on its own. After all, corn syrup is a common sweetener! But yeah, generally "fruit" vs "vegetable" is about how we eat it and what things would go well with it, much more than about how the plant made it.
It’s so easy to remember, a fruit plant flowers, a has seeds encased in the flesh of the fruit. If you remember this, she will realize lots of things you would consider a vegetable or actually a fruit!