Quezi

Tomato - fruit or vegetable? (photo by Glutnix - CC-BY)

Many words have different meanings when used in different contexts, and “vegetable” is one of those. There are some situations where a tomato can legitimately be considered a vegetable, but others where it is unambiguously a fruit.

From a culinary point of view, a tomato is a vegetable. Sometimes it’s used as a salad vegetable, and sometimes it’s a major ingredient of a dish. It’s just not sweet enough to be generally prepared and eaten as a fruit. For this reason, it’s found with the vegetables rather than with the fruits at the greengrocers or supermarket.

From a scientific point of view, a tomato is a fruit. Botanically, the fruit is the ripened ovary together with the seeds and surrounding tissues. Fruits are a plant’s mechanism for propagating by disseminating seeds. In botany, all of these are fruits: tomato, cucumber, beans, capsicum peppers, pumpkin, eggplant (aubergine), courgette (zucchini), peas, avocadoes and even nuts. Just look for the seeds.

Legally, the tomato was declared a vegetable by the US Supreme Court in 1893, because it was generally served with the main course rather than with the dessert. This ruling applies specifically to taxation by import tariffs, and has no wider implications.

Ceremonially, the tomato is officially the state vegetable of New Jersey, the state fruit and state vegetable of Arkansas, and the state fruit of Tennessee. The Creole tomato is the state vegetable plant of Louisiana.