Is the Tomato a Fruit or a Vegetable?:  Food for Thought

Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?  This is an age old question.  It ranks right there with the best of them:  If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And now…Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

Yesterday and today, my class had the wonderful opportunity to Skype live with two plant scientists from NC State University to gain research about the tomato plants that they are about to grow.  Among the many great questions they asked pertaining to tomato resources, types of cultivars, and rate of germination, one of them was:  Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?  I was both glad and worried that my young scientists had asked this.  Glad, because I wanted to know, but also worried that it would not be a vegetable and I would feel terrible having gulped down tomatoes in my youth and feeling like I had, in my mother’s voice, “not eaten my vegetables.”

So, when the question was posed, Ms. Swift chuckled a bit and gave one of the best answers that I have ever heard.  “A tomato is technically a fruit,” she said.  “It has seeds.  Any plant that reproduces using seeds is a fruit.  So in the science world, we call it a fruit,” she explained.  “However, culturally it is considered a vegetable.”  Then I heard a student whisper, “It’s both.” Then he did an “air fist clutch”.

Later, after the presentation had ended, I thought about how crucial language is.  It’s just not fair to include tomatoes in the “fruit” category.  After all, apples, oranges, pineapples, and bananas occupy that space, right?  Further, the language mavens have neatly grouped potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, and tomatoes into the vegetable category.  We have always referred to tomatoes as vegetables and that is that.

I sort of chuckled and thought that maybe this could be the source of a great etymology lesson.  After all, it is not very often that I get opportunities to teach linguistics and the sort.

I quickly said, “Class, are butterflies flies?” “Do they have anything to do with butter?”  A couple of students looked puzzled, then responded hesitantly, “No.”  “What about pineapples?” I continued.  “Are they apples?” “Of course not, but we call them such because that is the name we associate with them.”  “Maybe the first person that ever saw these things gave them these curious sounding names, but now that we know more because of science, we realize that the names for pineapples and butterflies don’t have anything to do with their species”. I went on to explain to them that just like tomatoes are scientifically a fruit, we have named them vegetables.  Perhaps it goes back to how they were prepared.  Maybe because many recipes called for them in soups, stews, sauces, and salads, like other vegetables such as greens, mushrooms, and beans, people began to call them vegetables and the name stuck.  Fruits, on the other hand are enjoyed alone as a snack.  Can you imagine biting into a tomato as an after lunch snack? This is much more closely associated with an apple, an orange, or even a pear.

By now, most of the students were nodding in agreement.  I wanted to bring the conversation back around to something more practical.  I asked them to think about some words and expressions that we use everyday such as:  web, net, and hang-up the phone.  These words all began meaning something else, but the way they are used today has changed.  This is similar to what has happened with tomatoes being actually being a fruit, but referred to as a vegetable because of how we use it and how it has been used.

I think both the students and I were a little more satisfied with the classification of tomatoes.  Hopefully, as students read and encounter words, they will think a little more critically about its name and the usage of that word.

Thank you Ms. Melodi Charles, Ms. Jennifer Swift, and the North Carolina State University Horticulture Lab for sharing your knowledge about plants with us; and above all, thank you for some food for thought.  I’ll have mine with a little tomato ketchup.

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Anthony Nesbit

I am an ESL teacher with Craven County Schools working to incorporate STEM activities into the classroom to improve the school to STEM career pipeline.