How Do You Know If It Is A Fruit Or Vegetable
To know if it is a fruit or vegetable, the taste is the most common indication. Fruits are generally sweet or sour to taste while vegetables are mild or savory. Fruit contains more calories than a vegetable because it contains high fructose as compared to a vegetable.
No worries, because we are going to briefly explain too how you can tell fruit from vegetables using the botanical definition. In the food world, there are a lot of plants most people think of as vegetables, which are in fact fruits, in the botanical sense. Speaking botanically, foods are categorized as being fruits if they have seeds or fruits and are derived from plants. Botanically, fruit is the seed-bearing structure developed by an ovary in a flowering plant, while vegetables are all the other parts of a plant, like roots, leaves, and stems.
In a botanical sense, defining fruit is what develops from the ovary of a flowering plant. Technically, the fruit is a seed of the plant, which is produced by the flowering ovary. The fruits that humans eat are the seeds-bearing structures of flowering plants, whereas vegetables are composed of edible stems, leaves, and other components of plants. Although the fruits are generally more mild and flavorful, they are from the flowers of the plants on which they grow.
From a culinary standpoint, fruit is plant-based food that has tart, sweet, or acidic flavors, whereas vegetables are a bit tangier and more muted. Chefs use a flavor profile, like sweet or savory, to determine if something is a vegetable or a fruit. It is the common assumption that one could classify produce as a fruit if it is sweet, while vegetables are classified if they are less flavourful, or if they are savory. There are edible plants we associate with fruits and vegetables, depending on how they taste and how we use them in cooking, but using this method of identification, there are plants out there that are frequently misclassified.
In nonscientific, everyday settings, we typically distinguish a fruit from a vegetable by the way we eat it and what dish we place it in, particularly by whether or not it is sweet. A nutritionist, chef, or even your grandmother, will use the kitchen classification system, which defines fruits and vegetables somewhat differently, according to the ways in which plants are used and their flavor profiles. There is been a lot of confusion about what is a vegetable and what is a fruit for some time now–tomatoes, we are looking at you. The way that we eat tomatoes, and how they are treated when cooked, means they are in the legitimate vegetable category as well.
By the way if you are interested in Are Potatoes Fruit, then check out this article where I cover things in detail!
As a root vegetable, Potatoes do not fall under the fruits of the vines definition which makes tomatoes fruits. However, we do prepare tomatoes in flavorful dishes, too, so we typically classify tomatoes as vegetables. Using flavor as the marker, chefs will classify tomatoes, corn, and eggplants as vegetables too, even though tomatoes are considered fruits by botanists.
| Fruits | Vegetables |
| In a botanical sense, the fruit is a seed of the plant, which is produced by the flowering ovary. | whereas vegetables are composed of edible stems, leaves, and other components of plants. |
| From a common assumption, fruit is plant-based food that has tart, sweet, or acidic flavors. | whereas vegetable is a bit tangier and more muted in flavor. |
In addition, fruits like tomatoes, and seeds like the pea, are generally considered vegetables. A vegetable, in botany, is any edible part of a plant that is not accidentally a fruit, as in leaves (spinach, lettuce, kale), roots (carrots, beets, turnips), stems (asparagus), tubers (potatoes), bulbs (onions), and flowers (cauliflower and broccoli). Yes, by definition, fruits are really only one kind of vegetable (because they are the edible parts of the plant). With that definition in mind, everything from bell peppers to cucumbers are fruits too, whereas carrots and potatoes are not.
To learn about What Happens If You Eat Bad Corn, then check out my article.
You could say that cucumbers are fruits if you are taking the botanical approach, or vegetables if you are taking the culinary approach. Tomatoes are typically prepared in savory dishes, even though they are a fruit in botanical terms, so from the culinary point of view, they are usually described as vegetables. No matter how you slice it, the tomato is technically a fruit (the ovary, where the seeds are packed), yet is generally treated as (and called) a vegetable.
A tomato plant is really a plant that is weedy–its parts are not woody, and it grows only in a single season–and by our definition, a vegetable is just that, a plant, per se, or an edible part of that plant. Anything that grows on the plant, and is a means of getting the seeds out into the world, is a fruit.
A fruit is often a sweet, meaty part of a plant that surrounds a seed, though some fruits, such as berries, have seeds on the outside of the fruit. Some plants have seeds and structure similar to that of an apple, but do not taste the same sweet taste that most fruits have.
Vegetable, edible produce from an herbaceous plant — i.e., one that has soft stems, to be distinguished from the edible nuts and fruits produced by plants that have woody stems, like shrubs and trees. Fruit defined as a developed fruiting pod from a seedling plant, with its contents and accessories, as a pea pod, walnut, tomato, or pineapple. Quick Summary A fruit is, technically speaking, a developed ovary on a plant, which comes from the flower and contains one or more seeds.
Our word fruit comes to us from Latin fructus or frui, meaning enjoy; vegetables, a more staid, ordinary kind of word, comes from vegetabilis, meaning to grow (as in, grow plants). GET comes from the fact that certain things that we eat are technically fruits, but are almost always called vegetables (and treated like vegetables, too). Traditionally, most people would classify vegetables as foods eaten as part of a meals main course, while fruits are foods eaten as desserts or snacks.
For some, their definition of fruit is that it is plant-based food eaten as a snack or dessert. For most of us, fruit is an edible, often sweet, part of a plant – usually the one eaten raw, squeezed into juice, or used for dessert. Now, nutritionally, the term fruit is used to describe the fleshy, sweet fruits of a botanical, while vegetable is used to denote a wider range of plant parts that are not as high in fructose. Now that this is settled, let us take a look at a few more common foods that are in fact fruits, but are thought to be vegetables, or vice versa.
Why is a cucumber a vegetable and not a fruit?
A type of edible plant member of the gourd family is the cucumber. It is extensively farmed and adds nutrition to any diet. Due to its use in cooking, cucumber is frequently seen as a vegetable. However, it is technically a fruit because it comes from blossoms and has seeds.
Why is a tomato fruit and not a vegetable?
Because tomatoes grow from flowers and include seeds, they are considered fruits according to botanical definition. However, they are most frequently used in cooking as a vegetable. In fact, based on its use in cooking, the US Supreme Court decided in 1893 that the tomato should be categorized as a vegetable.
Is a strawberry a fruit?
In reality, a strawberry is multiple fruit made up of several tiny individual fruits encased in a fleshy container. The real fruits, known as achenes, are the brownish or white specks that are typically mistaken for seeds. Each of these achenes is surrounded by a small seed.