Is the tomato a fruit or vegetable?

It is, of course, as everyone with even basic education knows, the seed-bearing ovary of a flowering plant, thusly a fruit and more specfically, a berry.

@ragingloli Then how come so many people call it a vegetable?

cuz they all wack, y’all.

@Cruiser The terms have gotten pretty interchangeable over time, but r is correct. A fruit is technically the reproductive part of the plant. So anything with seeds is a fruit.

It’s a fruit, like r is a fruit. We just associate fruits with being sweet and tomatoes aren’t sweet. Also, we use tomatoes alongside vegetables a lot more than we use other fruits along side vegetables. Lettuce and tomato. Salads. Etc.
Those are just my thoughts.

@Dutchess_III You need to try some Supersweet 100s. Cherry tomatoes that are so sweet they’re amazing. I share mine, and one guy said they were just like candy.

Botanically, it is a berry. Culinary, it is treated at a veggie. Strawberries aren’t berries… in fact they have their own little group and are called pseudocarp, or false berry and it is a fruit. Eggplants are also berries.

Ok, so what is….a coconut?

^^^I don’t recall ever encountering any coconut seeds in a fresh one, so that means it is not a fruit. Yet at the same time, it clearly isn’t a vegetable since the coconut shell is not edible. What classification is left? A nut?

You put the lime in the coconut…

How does a coconut plant grow? I don’t know that one.

Trees, Addie.

I know it’s a tree. But what does the tree start out from?

A coconut is just like an almond. It’s a drupe, like plums and peaches, and not a nut. (and not a fruit)

Yes most definitely YES

Coconuts grow from the entire green coconut the brown part we eat/drink is in the center, the outer hull sprouts fronds. This is where the coconut comes from Grow a coconut

Here is why the US opted to classify a tomato as a vegetable (avoiding a tax) and how the US Supreme Court was able to get away with it.

@Pied_Pfeffer I saw a similar article citing this Supreme Court decision and why I asked this question.

To a botanist, a fruit is an entity that develops from the fertilized ovary of a flower. This means that tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, corn kernels, and bean and pea pods are all fruits; so are apples, pears, peaches, apricots, melons and mangos. A vegetable, botanically, is any edible part of a plant that doesn’t happen to be a fruit, as in leaves (spinach, lettuce, cabbage), roots (carrots, beets, turnips), stems (asparagus), tubers (potatoes), bulbs (onions), and flowers (cauliflower and broccoli).

I guess I better start calling my vegetable garden just a garden or a fruit and vegetable garden.

Tomato…Botanically a fruit, culinarily a vegetable
Coconut…Botanically a drupe, culinarily a nut.
Peanut…Botanically a legume, culinarily a nut (usually)

Many other examples.

Specifically, and by definition, fruit. As eaten by people, vegetable.

It’s both.

“Fruit” is a botanical and culinary term.

“Vegetable” is only a culinary term. There is no botanical, scientific definition of a vegetable. It’s a non-scientific term referring to an edible part of a plant, including non-sweet fruits like eggplant, cucumber, and tomato. A tomato is both a fruit and a vegetable.

The word “vegetable” also sometimes covers fungi like mushrooms and truffles, which are obviously not plants.

It’s whatever you want it to be.

Try this one! http://www.naturespride.eu/uploads/tx_npdata/Tamarillo---Nature_s-Pride.jpg