Fruit is a part of every meal at our house. Creating colorful and delicious fruit salads is my wife's specialty.
One of Linda's typical concoctions might include raspberries, strawberries, grapes, blueberries and even vegetables such as melons.
Hold on! Melon is a vegetable?
Sort of. Maybe. Not really. It depends on how you define "fruit" and "vegetable."
Botanically, fruits develop from the ovary of the pistil, which is the female part of the flower. Thus, fruits come from a reproductive structure. In contrast, vegetables are foods from the nonreproductive or vegetative parts of the plant such as leaves (spinach), roots (carrots) and stems (asparagus).
By this definition, because melons develop from the ovary, they are unquestionably fruits. If that's the case, then why would the May issue of National Geographic state, "Melons can be considered both a fruit and a vegetable."
How can a melon be both?
The editors of National Geographic are apparently using both a botanical and culinary definition for fruits and veggies.
In our kitchens and restaurants, we consider a food that is sweet and typically eaten as dessert or salad as a "fruit," whereas "vegetable" describes a food, usually green, that is eaten during the main course of a meal.
Presumably National Geographic learned that some creative chef has prepared melon soup or a similar dish, which earned the melon its designation as a vegetable.
Got it? Here's a little test. Is a zucchini a fruit or vegetable? How about cucumbers, green beans, tomatoes, squash and bell peppers?
Right — they are all fruits! However, my mom would have said they are veggies. Many foods that we think are vegetables are actually fruits, and vice versa.
Perhaps the simplest way to distinguish the difference between fruits and vegetables is to look for seeds — only true botanical fruits have seeds inside of them. Vegetables do not.
If you didn't get a perfect score on the quiz, don't worry. It is rather confusing. At least you can't be blamed for establishing the tomato as the state vegetable of Arkansas and New Jersey, or voting for the watermelon as the state vegetable of Oklahoma.
Aside from some botanically inept legislators, does anyone really care whether melons and tomatoes are fruits or vegetables? In a word — yes!
In 1893, the Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes are a vegetable. Its decision ensured that tomatoes were subject to the Tariff Act, which required a tax be paid on imported vegetables but not fruits.
About 100 years later, the Reagan administration caused a commotion when it listed condiments such as tomato ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables to make it easier for school lunches to meet nutritional guidelines.
Now, if you gather any wild foods from "our woods and waters," you'll know whether they are fruits or vegetables.
The good news is that, like the ingredients in Linda's fruit salads, no matter what you call them, they will taste just as good.