Things Are Not Always What They Seem OR Eat Your Vegetables

A tomato is a fruit.  So is a cucumber.

If you want to be botanically technical, any edible plant is a fruit if it has seeds—especially if the seeds are in the middle of the pod/shell/ or other outer skin.  That means that all of these foods that you grew up eating and classifying as vegetables are really fruits:  olives, butternut squash, eggplant, okra, avocado, peppers, pumpkins, and peas.  Oh, and that rhubarb in your pie or jam—that’s a vegetable.

And you might say, “It doesn’t really matter does it?  Who cares if my guacamole is made with a fruit or a vegetable?”  And you may be right…in the grand scheme of things it might be a minute issue.  Of course, when you look at the most recently approved healthy eating pyramid—the one developed by Harvard School of Public Health—it is recommended that every day we should consume 3 servings of vegetables and 2-3 fruit servings. Now things get tricky again.

In general, vegetable dishes are those that are savory or salty—not sweet.  However there are some arbitrary cultural differences too.  Mushrooms and potatoes aren’t generally considered as vegetables—they are fungus and starch respectively.  But arguably, they are savory and salty. 

I’m getting confused.  You too?

I just want to eat healthy, make wise decisions about what I put in my mouth, and have enough variety that I don’t turn to my favorite food group in frustration:  chocolate.

I confess…I’m not a big vegetable lover, so I tend to stick to a few basic ones—peas, green beans, and carrots with an occasional beet, celery stick or radish tossed into the mix.  I even tolerate lettuce and spinach—but in moderation.  I’ve been on too many diets in my day where all I had to look forward to was my next salad, and I find I tend to balance a salad with a candy bar—you know, the suffer and reward concept.

Did you know that this question of fruit or vegetable even reached the Supreme Court in 1893?  Our greatest court of the country proclaimed that tomatoes are indeed to be classified as vegetables.  This was in relation to an import tariff…but nevertheless…there has been a ruling made.

Be it a leaf, seed, bud, stem, shoot, tuber, root, bulb, or a pod—it’s still up to you.  You get to decide.  So what’s for dinner tonight?  Please try to eat healthy, and remember, chocolate isn’t really a food group of its own.  Eat your vegetables!