Tuesday, April 05, 2005

The Great Debate

Volokh brings up the subject of whether a tomato is actually a fruit or a vegetable, and finds himself cutting through a mass of legal and botanical verbiage, and concludes that they are both. A logical conclusion, I suppose, but one which will not hold water. The placing of the seeds and the purpose of the bloom have nothing whatever to do with the average persons classification of fruits and vegetables.

The delineation is actually palate-related: fruits are sweet, vegetables are bitter or salty or starchy. Apples, oranges, banannas, pomegranates, grapes, strawberries, etc., are fruits. Beans, squash, potatoes, asparagus, etc. are vegetables. Tomatoes, which taste like the rotting interior of a gangrenous wound, are therefore vegetables.

I defy anyone to refute this distinction.

2 comments:

jg said...

tomatoes are fruits. now deal with it.

Andrew said...

Ummmm...no.