Is tomato a fruit?
Day 74 / 365
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
We’ve all heard the amusing fact, that scientifically a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable. This seems like a bizarre classification, so I decided to look into it. Is this actually a fact, or just fake news?
Scientists vs. Chefs
So tomato’s Wikipedia page describes it as a berry, and it describes a berry as a fleshy fruit. So Wikipedia certainly agrees that tomato is a fruit.
On further research, I found that the confusion seems to be who it is that you are asking. If you ask scientists, they will definitely tell you that it’s a fruit. This is because Tomato satisfies all the conditions of the scientific definition of a fruit.
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants(also known as angiosperms) formed from the ovary after flowering.
[src: Wikipedia]
On the other hand, if you ask cooks, they would say that tomato is a vegetable. This is because in culinary, fruits are something with high sugar content and are usually used in desserts.
How the US Supreme Court got involved
US tariff laws applied a duty on vegetables but not on fruits. Thus this controversy around Tomato caused a legal dispute. In 1893 the US Supreme court settled this by declaring the Tomato as a vegetable, based on its culinary uses.
This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog — How random are random digits?