What is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?
The answer depends on your relationship with the two items. If you’re stocking the produce department at a grocery store, a tomato is a vegetable. If you’re a plant scientist—a botanist—a tomato is a fruit. Cucumbers, pumpkins, avocados, and peppers are all fruits. Culturally, however, the grocer is going to call them vegetables. A fruit is the ripe ovary or ovaries of a flower—the mature ovary of a seed-bearing plant. Let’s say you’ve got a tomato plant with those little yellow flowers all ready. A bee comes along and fertilizes the flower. The flower starts developing into a fruit with the seed inside. (There are four kinds of fruits, which explains fruits such as pineapple and blueberries, but let’s not get into that.) And, hey, guess what? Nuts are fruits. True nuts that is, chestnut and filberts come to mind. Vegetables, however, are the roots (eg, carrot), tubers (eg, potato), leaves (eg spinach), stems (eg, celery), and other bits of plants that you might eat. For a botanist, a
From the botanist’s point of view, a fruit is the ovary of the plant – that is, the section of the plant that houses the seeds. By that definition, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, and pumpkins are fruits. Except for seeds and spices, the other edible parts of the plant are classified as vegetables. In the lingo of cooks, produce merchants, and officials of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a plant food is a vegetable if you usually eat it as part of a meal’s main course, and a fruit if you normally enjoy it as a dessert or as a sweet between-meal snack. By these guidelines, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, and pumpkins are vegetables. But unless you are a botanist, it is suggested that you either opt for the common usage or call the foods in question “fruit-vegetables”.
Many people can say that an apple is a fruit and a pepper is a vegetable, but what scientifically is the distinction between the two types of foods? The answer is based on the parts of the plant involved. Basically, fruits are developed from flowers, vegetables aren’t. A fruit is the ripened ovary/ovaries of the flower of a seed-bearing plant, and are derived from carpels, the plant’s basic female reproductive part. Fruits contain seeds, which serve as the ovules of the plant. Once a plant starts growing flowers and the flowers are fertilized, the flower can then develop into a fruit with seeds. Fruits are the ways that seeds can be spread, whether by falling from the plant to the ground or being eaten by an animal or human and spread in the leavings. Technically, anything with seeds should be classified as a fruit. Radishes and lettuce don’t have seeds, but squash do! Fruits are often so sweet because they contain plenty of fructose, which vegetables have little of. Even nuts are frui
The technical definition of a fruit is the (often fleshy) part of a plant that surrounds the seeds. By this definition, tomatoes, apples, pumpkins, eggplants, squashes, rose hips, peppers, peapods, cucumbers, and corn kernels are all fruits. All other edible plant parts are considered vegetables. Lettuce, carrots, and spinach are examples of vegetables. The popular definitions of fruit and vegetable are somewhat different from the technical definitions. Most people categorize “vegetables” as foods that are eaten as part of a meal’s main course and “fruits” as foods that are eaten for dessert or as a snack. Sources: Hillman, Howard. Kitchen Science, Rev. ed., p. 130; McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking, pp. 124-26.
