What's the difference between fruit and vegetables?

There is a difference between fruit and vegetables. The answer to this question may seem easy to understand. It's obvious. It has to be a fruit like a strawberry. It must be a vegetable. Is that how these two groups are defined? Is there anything else that needs to be considered?

Tomatoes are considered a fruit by some people. Tomatoes can be classified as a fruit or vegetable. The exact definitions will depend on whether you're a gardener or a chef. Your country of origin may affect how you view this issue.

Different definitions of a fruit and a vegetable will be given here. You might be surprised.

The issue will be looked at from a food point of view. Fruits and vegetables are separated according to their taste and smell. Fruits and vegetables are both sweet or sour. Two food groups have different uses. Vegetables will form a part of a side dish or the main course, while fruits will be added to desserts, smoothie or juices.

What constitutes fruit and vegetables will not be the same as a botanist would think. Fruits are seed-bearing structures that develop from the ovary of a flower. Vegetables are any part of a plant that isn't a fruit, such as leaves, roots, stems, tubers, bulbs, and flowers.

Depending on where you are from and the language you speak, how you view fruit and vegetables may be different. The scope of cultural differences was revealed in a survey in 2011. Rice was considered a vegetable by 20% of respondents based in the US. Spanish speakers called rice a vegetable more often than English speakers. Chinese speakers weren't as likely to do it. Some people think beans are a vegetable, while others think they're not. English speakers were more likely to call them vegetables.

Sometimes a debate over the difference between fruit and vegetables can get so heated that the law needs to intervene. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1893 that an imported tomato should be taxed as a vegetable. The court went with what they called the "ordinary" definitions of fruit and vegetables, despite acknowledging that a tomato is a botanical fruit.

There are additional resources.

You can read an article by The New York Botanical Garden or an analysis by National Geographic about fruits and what they mean.

Harvard has a page about the benefits of fruit and vegetables.

There is a bibliography.

There is a role for the dictionary in legal thought. There is a law review. There is a new tab at the top of the page.

Fruits and vegetables have a lot of different things going on. Yahia, E.M., and Carrillo-Lopez, A., are authors of a book.

The meaning of fruits and vegetables is explained. There is a public health nutrition website.