Question 1

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

Accepted Answer

Both, depending on whose definition you use — and the disagreement is not a trick question, it reflects two genuinely different classification systems.

**Botanically, a fruit is the mature ovary of a flowering plant, containing the seeds.** By that definition a tomato is unambiguously a fruit. So are cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines, peppers, pumpkins, avocados, olives, and — surprisingly to most people — **green beans and peas in the pod**, since the pod is the ovary.

**"Vegetable" has no botanical meaning at all.** It is a culinary and commercial category covering any edible plant part used in savoury cooking: roots (carrots), stems (celery), leaves (spinach), flowers (broccoli), tubers (potatoes) and, yes, fruits (tomatoes).

So the two systems are not in competition. One classifies by plant anatomy; the other by how the food is used at the table. A tomato is a botanical fruit and a culinary vegetable, and both statements are correct.

**The US Supreme Court settled it legally in 1893.** In *Nix v. Hedden*, tariffs applied to imported vegetables but not fruit, and an importer argued tomatoes were fruit. The court ruled unanimously that for tariff purposes tomatoes were vegetables, because in ordinary usage they are served with dinner rather than dessert. The judgment explicitly acknowledged the botanical position and set it aside as irrelevant to the statute.

**Other cases where the systems disagree:**

**Rhubarb** is a stem, so botanically a vegetable, used as a fruit.

**Strawberries** are not botanically berries — the seeds on the outside are the actual fruits, and the red flesh is swollen receptacle tissue.

**Bananas, tomatoes, grapes and avocados are botanically berries.**

**Peanuts are legumes**, not nuts. **Almonds and cashews** are seeds of drupes, not true nuts.

Use whichever system fits the context.

Question 2

Does cooking destroy the nutrients in food?

Accepted Answer

Some, sometimes — and it increases the availability of others, which is the part usually left out. Whether cooking is a net loss or gain depends entirely on the nutrient and the method. What cooking

Question 3

What is the difference between gelatine, pectin and agar?

Accepted Answer

Three setting agents from completely different sources, setting at different temperatures, with different textures — and they are not interchangeable in a recipe. Gelatine. A protein derived from

Question 4

Why does a sharp knife matter?

Accepted Answer

Because a sharp knife is safer, faster and produces better food — and the safety point is the one that surprises people, since a blunt knife is the more dangerous tool. Why blunt is dangerous. A

Question 5

Why do green vegetables go dull when cooked?

Accepted Answer

Because heat and acid destroy chlorophyll, converting the vivid green pigment into a drab olive one — and the change is chemically specific and largely preventable. What happens. Chlorophyll contains

Question 6

Why do bananas make other fruit ripen faster?

Accepted Answer

Because they release ethylene, a gaseous plant hormone that triggers ripening — and they release a lot of it. Ethylene signals fruit to convert starches to sugars, soften cell walls, change colour

Question 7

What is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato?

Accepted Answer

They are completely unrelated plants, and most things sold as "yams" in supermarkets — particularly in the United States — are sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes belong to the morning glory family. They

Related Questions