Vegetables

Appears in

Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

Published 2004

About

A vegetable is defined as any herbaceous crop grown for parts that can be eaten fresh or processed. The origins of the word are instructive. In Old French the word vegetable meant “living or fit to live,” in medieval Latin vegetabilis meant “growing or flourishing,” and in the Latin of ancient Rome vegetare meant “to enliven.”

The first American settlers arrived with seeds sewn into their hems and cuttings in their pockets. They were looking for arable land—and they found it. Throughout its history the United States has produced fresh vegetables, in small kitchen gardens and bare urban lots primped and tended by hand and in vast fields tilled and prodded by machine and sometimes ravaged by chemicals. In the context of wars, technological advances, and the American zeal for convenience, vegetables have known ups and down, but their strongest patrons and protectors often have been the smallest. Owing largely to the diligence of home gardeners and small farmers and growers throughout American history, vegetables and their reputation continued to thrive in the United States in the first decade of the twenty-first century.