Why Is a Tomato a Fruit & a Vegetable?

Tomatoes come in all shapes, sizes and colors.

While walking down the produce section of any grocery store, you can stop a series of people and ask them whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable and chances are that you will get answers that it is a fruit, that it is a vegetable, and some people may say it is both. It is a confusing subject to most people who do not know the true meanings of fruit and vegetable. There is a truth to the matter, and it is that a tomato is a fruit.

What is a Tomato

Tomatoes are a mildly acidic, pulpy food. Tomatoes come in shades of red, yellow, orange or green that vary depending on maturity and species. Tomatoes have a spherical shape though they can be ovoid or other irregular shapes.

What is a Fruit

True fruits, according to the Oxford dictionary, are "developed from the ovary in the base of the flower, and contain the seeds of the plant (though cultivated forms may be seedless)." Some examples of true fruits are raspberries, blueberries, oranges and some nuts. Some nuts, such as pistachios, are the seed of the plant and the hard outer shell of the nut is considered the fruit. Also, strawberries are not considered fruits, because they do not contain the seeds but they support the seeds on their outside. In cooking, fruits are the foods used in sweet cooking, which is why many non-fruits, such as strawberries, are considered fruits.

What is a Vegetable?

Vegetables are the edible parts of cultivated plants that are not the seed containers. The term vegetable is loosely used to describe the non-fruit parts of plants that are edible. The root of beets, the leaf of spinach, and the flower buds of broccoli are all considered vegetables. In reference to cooking, vegetables are the foods used in savory cooking, not sweet cooking.

Tomato as a Vegetable

Tomatoes are often mistaken as vegetables because of their culinary use. When used for cooking, tomatoes are used in the savory cooking that is associated with vegetables, though they are not truly a vegetable. The only way to have a tomato as a vegetable would be to eat the stalk that the tomato grows on, though it's not recommended.

Tomato as a Fruit

Tomatoes are fruits, as described by the Oxford dictionary and the U.S. Department of Energy. Tomatoes are seed bearing and they originate from the ovary of the flower of the plant. In no sense is a tomato a vegetable, though due to its use in cooking, it has been labeled as such.

References

• AskOxford.com: Frequently Asked Questions
• U.S. Department of Energy: Tomato as Fruit, Not Vegetable
• The Free Dictionary: Vegetable