How to classify fruits and vegetables

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What is a vegetable?
Examples of fruits and vegetables
Types of Vegetables
Differences in popular usage

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Volume 22, Supplement, December 2009, Pages S23-S31

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2008.11.012Get rights and content

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It seems pretty obvious—we all know that apples are fruits and cucumbers are vegetables. But, are they really? Apples are indeed fruits, but you might be surprised to know that cucumbers are actually, botanically speaking, a fruit as well. There are edible plants that we associate as fruits and vegetables based on their flavor and how we use them in cooking, but by using that way of identification, some plants are often misclassified.

The most controversial example of misclassified produce is the tomato—is it a fruit or a vegetable? It has seeds and a structure like an apple, but it doesn't have the same sweet taste as most fruits. Most of us would call tomatoes a vegetable because you grow them in a vegetable garden with potatoes, lettuce, and carrots (which are vegetables). Legally in the United States, since a court ruling in 1893, tomatoes are considered to be vegetables. But, scientifically, tomatoes are actually fruits. Here are a few more facts about fruits and veggies that might make you rethink a few things.

From a culinary standpoint, fruits and vegetables are separated based on taste: fruits are sweet or sour, and vegetables are more mild and savory. Fruits make great garnishes, desserts, or juices, while vegetables are a hearty side dish or base for the main course.

Nutritionally, the only large generalization that can be made is that sweet fruits tend to be higher in natural sugars. Other than that, vitamins, sugar content, fiber, and carbohydrates vary a lot by the individual plant. The USDA recommends eating a mix of fruits and vegetables throughout the day so that you'll get a larger variety of vitamins and nutrients in your diet.

Although we use these edible plants in a certain way in the kitchen, their botanical makeup classifies them differently. Fruits come from the flower of the plant that they grow on. If the produce develops from other parts of the plant besides the flower, it's considered a vegetable. Fruits contain seeds. Vegetables consist of roots, stems, and leaves.

Just because we consider some produce to be our veggies in our savory meals, doesn't mean they are technically a vegetable. Although these fruits tend to be more mild and savory in flavor, they come from the flower of the plant they grow on. They also have seeds (or a pit).

In the kitchen, it doesn't really matter if the plant product you're using is a fruit or a vegetable—vegetables can be used in dessert (hello, carrot cake) and fruit can be used in savory dishes, like a summery dinner salad. Although it won't change your cooking too much, it's always good to know what you're dealing with, especially if you are growing the produce yourself. Plus, your new edible food knowledge may help you at your next trivia night.

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A fruit is the mature ovary of a seed plant, usually developed from a flower. Fruits have seeds so they further the reproductive cycle. A vegetable is a plant or that part of a plant which is edible, and does not necessarily have a role in the plant's reproductive cycle. While most vegetables and fruits are easy to distinguish and classify, some are still ambiguous as to whether they are a vegetable or a fruit. Tomatoes, olives and avocados are often considered vegetables, but are actually fruits.

A fruit is defined as the developed ovary of a seed plant with its contents and accessory parts, as the pea pod, nut, tomato, or pineapple. It is the edible part of a plant developed from a flower, with any accessory tissues, as the peach, mulberry, or banana. A fruit is the often sweet and fleshy part of a plant that surrounds the seeds, although some fruits like berries bear the seed on the outside of the fruit.

What is a vegetable?

All other edible plant parts are considered vegetables. A vegetable is an herbaceous plant cultivated for an edible part, such as the root of the beet, the leaf of spinach, or the flower buds of broccoli or cauliflower.

Examples of fruits and vegetables

Here's an interesting list of fruits that are often thought to be vegetables:

Apples, eggplants, rose hips and corn kernels are also fruits.

It is also interesting to note that mushrooms are neither fruit nor vegetable; they are a type of fungus.

Types of Vegetables

Examples of vegetables include broccoli, potato, onions]], lettuce, spinach, turnips, cauliflower, . Vegetables are classified according to the part of the plant:

Root vegetables: underground plant parts consumed by people as food. Root vegetables are generally storage organs, enlarged to store energy in the form of carbohydrates.
- Bulb vegetables like garlic, onion, shallot
- Tuberous roots like sweet potatoes and yams
- Taproots like radishes and carrots
- Root-like stems such as Florida arrowroot
- Modified plant stems like turmeric, lotus root, taro, water lily, ginger and potato
Edible Flowers: flowers that are consumed either raw or after cooking. e.g. broccoli, chives, cornflower, cauliflower, basil, bean, okra
Stems like asparagus, leek, sugar cane
Leafy vegetables like spinach, lettuce, kale, mustard and cabbage

Differences in popular usage

Fruits and vegetables are vegetarian as well as vegan, hence constitute a big part of the staple diet in almost every household.

Traditionally, 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.

Most fruits are sweet with bitter seeds, because they contain a simple sugar called fructose, while most vegetables are less sweet because they have much less fructose. The sweetness of fruit encourages animals to eat it and spit out the bitter seeds on the ground so they spread and further the plant's life cycle.

Nutrition

Both fruits and vegetables are very high in nutrition as they contain many vitamins and are low in fat and calories. A cup of fruit may contain more calories than a cup of vegetables because fruits have higher sugar content. However, starchy vegetables like beet and potato are higher in calorie as well as sugar.

Although vegetables and fruits are extensively used in preparations that involve cooking or baking, they provide most nutrition when they are eaten raw.

Because of the combination of high nutrition and low calorie, most weight loss and diet plans recommend high portions of fruits and veggies over processed food.

In the video below, a dietitian talks about the importance of fruits and vegetables to the diet and whether canned or frozen fruits and vegetables are just as nutritious as fresh.