Do vegetables really exist?

I thought I had already asked this, but I cannot find it anywhere with searches, so I must have just dreamed it.

I am having a hard time explaining to my very literal kids what a vegetable is. We have taught them that tomatoes and cucumbers are actually fruits. Potato? A tuber. Lettuce? A leaf. Corn? A seed. Carrot? A root. Beans? A fruit or seed depending on how you eat it.

I realized that I cannot think of any edible plants that wouldn't fit some other category. So... do veggies really exist?

A veggie would be any part of a plant that isn't a fruit or seed and is a very generic term. If you want to talk about it as a culinary term, then if its used in savoury cooking and is a part of a plant, people will usually call it a vegetable.

yup. nothing is botanically a ‘vegetable’, it’s not a botany term. the idea is cultural.

Vegetable

Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, leaves, roots, and seeds. An alternative definition of the term is applied somewhat arbitrarily, often by culinary and cultural tradition. It may exclude foods derived from some plants that are fruits, flowers, nuts, and cereal grains, but include savoury fruits such as tomatoes and courgettes, flowers such as broccoli, and seeds such as pulses.

The word vegetable was first recorded in English in the early 15th century. It comes from Old French,[1] and was originally applied to all plants; the word is still used in this sense in biological contexts.

The exact definition of "vegetable" may vary simply because of the many parts of a plant consumed as food worldwide—roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. The broadest definition is the word's use adjectivally to mean "matter of plant origin". More specifically, a vegetable may be defined as "any plant, part of which is used for food",[5] a secondary meaning then being "the edible part of such a plant".[5] A more precise definition is "any plant part consumed for food that is not a fruit or seed, but including mature fruits that are eaten as part of a main meal".[6][7] Falling outside these definitions are edible fungi (such as edible mushrooms) and edible seaweed which, although not parts of plants, are often treated as vegetables.[8]

In the latter-mentioned definition of "vegetable", which is used in everyday language, the words "fruit" and "vegetable" are mutually exclusive. "Fruit" has a precise botanical meaning, being a part that developed from the ovary of a flowering plant. This is considerably different from the word's culinary meaning. While peaches, plums, and oranges are "fruit" in both senses, many items commonly called "vegetables", such as eggplants, bell peppers, and tomatoes, are botanically fruits. The question of whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893. The court ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is correctly identified as, and thus taxed as, a vegetable, for the purposes of the Tariff of 1883 on imported produce. The court did acknowledge, however, that, botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.

There's more. It's a worthwhile read when you're somewhere free.

Hi Christopher,
Unfortunately this network blocks wikipedia. Any chance you could copy and paste the relevant part you wanted to share?

Yes, vegetables exist.  They are good for you.  Eat them and stop asking questions. :)

Yes, vegetables exist.  They are good for you.  Eat them and stop asking questions. :)

That made me laugh :)

There have already been great explanations for what vegetables are and do vegetables really exist.

Here is another thought:

https://permies.com/t/87797/Difference-Fruit-Vegetable

Matt McSpadden wrote:

Trace Oswald:  Yes, vegetables exist.  They are good for you.  Eat them and stop asking questions. :)

That made me laugh :)

Funny, yes, but having raised a particularly literal kid, it won't give you much traction in real life!

Actually saying something along the lines of, "vegetables are our society's word for parts of plants that are served as part of a main meal and are important for our health and growth. Things classed as "fruit" usually have much more fructose (or dumb it down to sugar but I'd be inclined to talk up to literal kids, rather than down) than plant parts classed as vegetables."

Or you could decide to go all botanical with your kids. Hubby looked very confused when I told him I was going out to forage for some forbs for dinner.  I hadn't decided *which* forbs I was going to harvest until I saw the plants, so I used the general term "forb".

This might be a good opportunity to start teaching about culinary terms, and how they're different but complimentary to botanical terms!

So in that way, a vegetable would be defined as the edible product of a plant with a soft stem, while fruits and nuts are produced by woody-stemmed plants like shrubs and trees. That's why a cook might call a tomato a vegetable. Anyway, it does taste good in a vegetable soup.

Different spheres of use have different cultural histories and different terminology. It could be a fun way to expand your family's knowledge together to explore other things that have different names in the garden vs kitchen, the etymology of those words and why people called them that and how they used them.

Asking questions is wonderful, it is how we learn and what children do best! Who knows, maybe someone will discover a new interest in a type of food or preparation process. Kids (and adults) who like to learn about growing and cooking vegetables don't usually have much trouble eating them, either

Oh man, so much pain in my youth spent trying to figure this out.  I finally decided that where we draw the line around the box we call "vegetable" depends on what angle we are looking at it from.  Culinary school?  Garden shops?  Science?  Grocery store advertisements.  Government recommended dietary pyramids or plates or rainbows or whatever they are going on about this year.  So many angles, and so many messy lines.

In the end, I decided it's like colour, a purely arbitrary word we put on something that our language is inept at describing.  Where is the difference between pink and red?  Many languages don't distinguish between the two, they are both red.

Rebecca Rosa wrote:So in that way, a vegetable would be defined as the edible product of a plant with a soft stem, while fruits and nuts are produced by woody-stemmed plants like shrubs and trees.

However in some countries, farmers are making much more effort to grow edible tree leaves, for example mulberry leaves. Veggies grown as mono-cultures may degrade farmland. Growing edible leaf shrubs may not require the same level of soil disturbance, although it does sometimes seem that humans can take an good idea and make a muck of it!

Apparently, China's doing a lot of research on this idea as they're concerned about being able to feed their population and think this concept may help a lot.