Advertisement
Classifying Vegetables
Appears in
Published 2025
Many people are bothered by the fact that tomatoes are referred to as vegetables when they are, in fact, fruits. Yes, tomatoes are fruits, and carrots are roots, and spinach is a leaf, and they are all vegetables.
To a botanist, the term fruit refers to a specific part of a plant, just as do the terms stem, root, and leaf. A fruit is defined as the ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed‐bearing plant, and it contains the seeds. In other words, if it has seeds, it’s a fruit. We shouldn’t be misled by the fact that a few fruits are sweet. Many, if not most, fruits in nature are not sweet at all. Some examples of fruits used in the vegetable kitchen are tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, green beans, okra, cucumbers, squash, pea pods, and avocados.