Fruits vs Vegetables?

The word “fruit” is scientific/technical. The word “vegetable” is not.

There are multiple ways of defining a “vegetable”. One way of defining it is any edible part of a plant that is not the fruit. In other words: seeds, flowers, leaves, stems, roots, etc. Everything except the fruit of the plant, which is a developed ovary containing the seeds, a true biological part of a plant.

Another definition of a vegetable is a “culinary vegetable” which includes edible non-fruit parts of a plant and includes non-sweet fruits like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, etc. and even things like mushrooms, which are not plants.

I am sure someone will have a better answer, but the way I remember is fruits are the ovaries of the plant. Fruits technically I think are from flowering plants, so some foods we classify as vegetables are arguably fruits, like tomatoes and zuchinis. Fruits also tend to be higher in sugar than a veggie. Vegetables are part of the plant, like the root. It’s something like that. I guess there is a scientific definition, and then also a common usage definition most likely.

Botanical answer – fruits have seeds.

Culinary answer – fruit is sweet

For example, tomatoes and peas are botanical fruits and a culinary vegetables.

I can eat tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, snow peas and other fruit often called vegetables just as I would eat fruit. Pick it up and bite in. Turban squash not so much, although I dearly love them lightly steamed to just the point of tenderness. They are as sweet as pumpkin pie with no sugar added. OK, you can eat lettuce, and even asparagus raw in salads as well. Celery too. And you can cook apples and most other fruit into compotes, pies, tarts….

I don’t know. I just know I like them all. Even lowly okra is a hit with me. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? Who cares? Okra gumbo—who could even tell whether it’s a fruit or a vegetable? It’s just good.

You will get different answers from botanists, grocers and chefs. Only a fool would think that botanists have the only right answers. Supermarkets can and will say that vegetables are the things sold on this side of the aisle, and fruits are the things sold on the other side. And they’re right, according to THEIR taxonomy. Now when a botanist walks into the supermarket and keeps looking on the FRUIT side for tomatoes and cucumbers, you can fairly laugh at them. If you know better than them, you will go to the vegetable side to get your tomatoes and cucumbers and you will be successful in that pursuit, but the poor botanist, and those who think botanists have all the right answers will sit waiting and waiting on the fruit side of the aisle for tomatoes and cucumbers to magically appear. But they won’t.

My definition of fruit is anything sweet that you would put in a fruit salad. Some people consider a tomato to be a fruit, but since I would not put a tomato in a fruit salad, by my definition it is not a fruit.