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For practical purposes, tomatoes are vegetables, peanuts are nuts, and palm trees are trees. Tomatoes and peanuts are primarily known to be useful as food, and
by DangitBobby 4y ago
For practical purposes, tomatoes are vegetables, peanuts are nuts, and palm trees are trees.
Tomatoes and peanuts are primarily known to be useful as food, and in the context of food, they fill the niche of vegetables and peanuts, respectively. Palm trees are useful pretty much only decoratively and to provide shade (unless you harvest them, which most people don't) so they have exactly the same utility as trees, making them trees.
It's interesting to think about how these things are biologically different from the other things in their practical category, but we strip away the utility of placing things into categories if we try to apply them outside of the context in which the category is... useful. So unless you're in a biology lesson (or you are a botanist, or just having fun with facts), tomatoes are vegetables.
- ranko 4y agoTomatoes are vegetables and fruit. "Fruit" is a botanical category, including plenty of things that are inedible for various reasons. "Vegetable" is a culinary category, including many things that are fruit (aubergine/eggplant, cucumber, and many more).
- j16sdiz 4y agoThe word "Vegetable" also means plants in general, according to the english dictionary. Human languages are great, aint they?
- DangitBobby 4y agoYes. However, you tell me fruit and I think sweet, so telling me a fruit isn't actually useful.
- dekhn 4y agoAll fruits are vegetables; not all vegetables are fruit. Tomato is a fruit because it's the fleshy reproductive body of a plant containing seeds. What's interesting about peanuts is that it seems to have the same allergenicity profile as nuts that cause allergies. Kind of odd for a legume, if you ask me.
- michael1999 4y agoNah. Legumes are famously hard to digest without fermentation or other processing.
- dekhn 4y ago"hard to digest" and "causes an allergic reaction" are two different things.
- michael1999 4y agoThe path from hard to digest to allergy is an open topic.
- lmm 4y ago> What's interesting about peanuts is that it seems to have the same allergenicity profile as nuts that cause allergies. Huh? Peanut allergy is distinct from nut allergy; people with peanut allergies can generally eat nuts fine, and vice versa.
- DangitBobby 4y agoIf I hand you a tomato and you've never seen one before, how will "that's a fruit" guide you in your experience? I feel like common sense pragmatism is being ignored here.