I never really thought there was any
truth to the phrase 'Beans! Beans! The magical fruit; the more you eat; the
more you toot!' After all, beans are a vegetable, right? Then I took a quiz from MIStupid.com to try to tell
if various plants are fruits or vegetables. I learned that while many foods may
be harvested like vegetables, they are actually classified as fruits.
I was brought up thinking that the fresh
produce grown in our garden were vegetables - plants like cucumbers, pumpkins,
peppers, lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes.
Later, it was learned that tomatoes were considered a fruit. This new
classification didn't change how we gathered tomatoes and planted them in the
(mostly) vegetable garden. Now, I have been reading more and more that a lot of
the foods we planted in our so called 'vegetable garden' are really fruits. So
what gives?
A lot of websites have definitions for
fruits and vegetables. Fruits are defined as the maturing ovary of flowering
plants. This makes sense. There are flowers on apple trees right before tiny
round apples appear. It never dawned on me, however, that - like apple trees in
the Spring - peppers, cucumbers and pumpkins all have flowers before their
associated crop starts to grow. Now you know what a fruit really is.
The basic definition of a vegetable is a
plant where you eat anything besides the reproductive organs. Some examples of
edible plant parts are the stalk (celery), bulbs (garlic), leaves (lettuce),
and roots (carrot). So as long as you aren't eating the flesh of a mature ovary
in your garden, you are eating a vegetable. Not very appetizing, huh?
By understanding these definitions of
fruits and vegetables, it is easy to see why some of what we thought were
vegetables are really fruits. Historically, fruits have been known for their
sweet, pungent tastes and aromas. But now there are new fruits in town. And
these new fruits are found in your garden not on your trees.
Resources:
http://mistupid.com/food/fruits.htm
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Re: Beans! Beans! The Magical Fruit?
