This debate has raged for decades — is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Both sides have valid points. What’s your opinion?
Share why if you wish.
Tomato: Fruit Or Vegetable?
Asking — and answering — life's interesting questions
This debate has raged for decades — is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Both sides have valid points. What’s your opinion?
Share why if you wish.
Taxonomy says fruit, culinary habits say vegetable. So, why not both?
Does make me wonder, though, if there are any good fruit recipes that include tomatoes. Like this: https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/tomato-fruit-salad
It seems to me that everyone grows up thinking of a tomato as a vegetable, and using it with other vegetables in various dishes. So, for all intents and purposes, in common use it is a vegetable (even if the biological classification says otherwise).
For us non-biologists, referring to the tomato as a vegetable does no one any harm, so vegetable it is.
This information comes directly from Live Science and National Public Radio:
In the 1893 United States Supreme Court case Nix. v. Hedden, the court ruled unanimously that an imported tomato should be taxed as a vegetable, rather than as a (less taxed) fruit.
In the decision, the justices distinguished between science and everyday life. The justices admitted that botanically-speaking, tomatoes were technically fruits. But in everyday life, they decided, vegetables were things “usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats … and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.”
I side with the Supreme Court on this one.
A favorite quote: Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad.
While usually used in savory dishes, (though my FIL eats them with sugar and cream) I have to side with the botanical classification. Tomatoes are fruits.