What is the real difference between a fruit and a vegetable?
My opinion is that all plants are vegetables. Fruits are a specific organ on almost all flowering plants. A fruit is defined as a developed ovary or seed case. It is the fleshy tissue that surrounds the seed(s). Some fruits are edible some not. Some are thick some are little more than a husk. By this definition such foods as tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and avocados are fruits as are the ones we usually identify as such like apples and oranges. The strawberry which is usually thought of as a fruit is not. The actual fruits of that plant are the husks that surround the tiny seeds on the surface of “berry”. The sweet red part we prize is really a modified stem. Some so-called fruits have lost their ability to form seeds (grapes, watermelon) but since that was their original function we can still call them fruits. In terms of what we eat, if it is an ovary — a seed case — then it is a fruit and if it some other part of the plant such as the stem, root, leaf or tuber then is is a vegetab
