The whole fruit/vegetable controversy only comes because we’re trying to use two different domains of terms interchangeably: botanical terms and culinary terms.
Tomatoes (and squash, and pumpkins (which, side note, are a type of squash), and cucumbers) are botanically fruits, but culinarily they’re most commonly used as vegetables because they tend to be less sweet, particularly when raw. Mushrooms are botanically…well, I guess they’re botanically “n/a”, as they’re not a part of the plantae kingdom, but whatever–they’re typically considered botanical, so they’re “botanically” fungi, but culinarily they’re most commonly used as vegetables (or, interestingly, as meat replacements).
We get into the same linguistic confusion when we start throwing around “peanuts aren’t nuts, they’re legumes!”–botanically, yes, peanuts are legumes, but culinarily they’re most commonly used as nuts. See also: “green beans” are botanically pods, not beans, but we use them culinarily as vegetables; and many “berries” are botanically something else but we use them culinarily as berries; meaning they’re often left whole, mixed with other berries in the same dish, and go well with cream in cold summer desserts.
The whole thing is a misguided exercise in pedantry; “technically burritos aren’t sandwiches, they’re meat-sacks!” They’re both, and we instinctively understand that trying to compare the two terms is silly because “sandwich” is a culinary term and “sack” is not.
Another funny part of this is that pedants are trying to say that tomatoes are (botanically) fruits and not vegetables, but the closest thing to a definition we have for “vegetable” botanically is “literally all plant life and maybe also some fungi,” so tomatoes are clearly both fruit and vegetable botanically.Plus, they’re culinarily used as vegetables, but can also be used as fruits in some cakes, pies, sorbets, and so forth (and isn’t ketchup just a tomato smoothie?), so tomatoes are clearly both fruit and vegetable in culinary terms as well.edit: Someone who actually knows what they’re talking about (an ecologist) has corrected my botanical definition of “vegetable.” Actually, they’re “edible parts of a plant which are not fruit.” Which means that tomatoes are explicitly excluded as vegetables, being botanically a fruit. I don’t think that ruins my overall point in any way, though.
Another similar thing is the definition of ripe.
A fruit can be ripe for consumption (culinary ripeness), and it can be ripe for seed-bearing (botanical ripeness). You can see the difference with cucumbers, which are ripe for eating when they are green and the seeds are barely developed, while they are close to inedible when ripe for seed-bearing. Then they will turn yellow, the pulp shrinks down and becomes slimy and the seeds become big and hard.
Oh dang, I hadn’t even considered that! I wonder if that’s the same across all fruits we tend to eat raw.
No, most are actually at their best when the seeds are ripe too, but there are others where culinary ripeness doesn’t equal seed ripeness, like e.g.green bell peppers.
Ah, once again, nature refuses to be easily categorized! Thanks.
Tumblr is the neo-positivist/neo-berkeleyianism hivemind as a result from the inoculation by western STEM ideology. They love their AKSHUALLY WOW MINDBLOWN spiel.
The true misconception is that there are scientific definitions and culinary definitions. No the culinary definitions don’t fit their scientific category. They’re not intended to.
That’s because Vegetable is not a Botanical Term. It is a culinary term. So, Tomatoes are both fruit and vegetable.
Fungi only got its own kingdom in 1969, before that they were a phylum in Plantae. There are tons of people still around who learned “mushrooms are plants” in school, so it’s not surprising downstream vocabulary hasn’t caught up.
They have properties from plants but also from animals, it’s an independent evolution from both.
They’re (mushrooms) also constantly listed on American menus as a “protein” option despite a dire lack of the stuff
Hmm, is it really that little? The stats look devastating, like e.g. 3 grams per 100 grams, but mushrooms also consist out of 90+ grams of water.
For example, the button mushroom has:
100 g total - 91.8 g water - 1.7 g fiber = 6.5g nutrients
2.89 g protein / 6.5 g nutrients = 44.4% proteinComparing that to e.g. canned black beans:
100 g total - 70.8 g water - 6.69 g fiber = 22.51 g nutrients
6.91 g protein / 22.51 g nutrients = 30.9% proteinThat’s a neat site, and I was hoping your answer was in there, but they don’t have data on cooked mushrooms. We’ll have to do a bit of math.
So you’re taking the nutritional data provided and then shunting the fiber and water out of the way. Why? You can’t just eat the nutritional parts of food; you have to eat the whole thing, and that limits the amount of food, and thus nutrition, you can ingest in a day.
Were you thinking about food prep? Some water weight is lost there, certainly, but it’s not everything.
Let’s add a raw steak into the mix, and then we can instead look at how much water weight is actually lost when you prep these things to eat, by estimating it from data elsewhere.
The beans are ready to eat. They’re drained and rinsed. You don’t remove that water weight. So that’s 7 grams of protein per 100 gram serving.
The steak will lose about 25% of its weight when cooked, per multiple sources I found during a search. That means we need about 133 grams of raw beef to achieve 100 grams of cooked beef. So we can multiply its 21 grams of protein by 1.33, and we get about 29 grams of protein in a 100 gram serving. Their grilled steak averages around the same amount, so we’re on track so far.
Why is that discrepancy so great? I thought beans were supposed to be a great replacement for meat?
That comparison was done between beef and dry beans (note the 24 grams of protein, about the same as the beef). 100 grams of dry beans becomes about 370 grams of prepared beans. So in a 100 gram serving of beans you can actually eat, you get just over a quarter of that 24 grams protein: our ~7 grams from earlier. You also lose some water soluble protein when you rinse and drain them. They’re not the magic protein replacement people think they are.
Mushrooms are even worse. Per America’s Test Kitchen (and we’re gonna have to take these numbers at face value because I can’t find anything else), shiitake mushrooms lose about 14% of their weight in water when cooked, and cremini (think portobello, they’re just different stages of development) mushrooms lose about 60%. Thankfully the USDA’s site also has nutritional data listed for these two types of mushrooms: “minimally processed” shiitake and cremini mushrooms contain 2.4 and 3.1 grams of protein, respectively, per 100 gram serving. But those aren’t meal ready. To do that, we’ll cook the mushrooms, and they’ll shrink to 86 gram and 40 gram servings. So let’s start with enough raw mushrooms—119 grams of shiitake (or 119% of the original serving) and 250 grams (250%) of cremini. Multiply our proteins by 1.19 and 2.5 and we get a plausible range of between 3 and 8 grams of protein per 100g serving. So some are comparable to beans in their protein content! And some contain half, or less, of an already low amount when compared to the protein found in meat.
This quick comparison on Wolfram Alpha shows a similar story, with a less optimistic look at mushrooms’ possible protein content. Screenshot:
Now, the fact that you’re taking in so much more water when you eat 100 grams of beans or mushrooms than you are when you eat meat means you can eat more of them, and drink less fluids, but only to a point. And you’re certainly not getting 8 times more mushrooms than beef from a restaurant when they do a protein substitution. Getting enough protein in a vegetarian or vegan diet can be hard work. And restaurants are not making it easier by misleading people who may not know any better—I’m certain it’s careless, not malicious, but it is happening either way.
I’ve anyway severe doubts that most American food really is food
Big Mushroom is going to take out OP, Boeing-style.
Always dismiss those people who talk about how tomatoes are fruits as nerds. The category “vegetable” in the kitchen usually refers to more savory plants, not that what part of the fruit it is. Also if you’re still one of those “um, ackchually, tomatoes are fruits” kind of people, then eat tomatoes like apples. Maybe even some chili peppers too, they’re berries.
It’s just interesting that there’s a distinction between botanical and culinary classification. Once you realise that there are two different systems that don’t necessarily need to completely agree then it’s not a big deal.
…also, what exactly is wrong with taking a bite out of a tomato like an apple? They’re delicious.
Tomatoes and fruits are a great litmus test (no pun intended) to see if a person can recognize the domain of their knowledge. Some people glomp onto a fact that is correct in some scenarios and use it as an “umm actually” where it isn’t appropriate or even correct (like the definition of racism)
A burger meal is mostly vegetable and fruits, vegetable bread a thin slice of meat. served with vegetable potatoes (fries), vegetable hot sauce, tomatoes, and a vegetable drink filled with the vegetable corn syrup.
vegetables are good for you, they say.
As someone who thinks tomatoes are vegetables, I would eat more tomatoes like apples if they didn’t give me canker sores every time.
Fruits vs vegetables is an arbitrary, near-meaningless distinction. See here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=E8mcTIEVKUU
No a fruit is a biologically defined thing right? On the vegetables I’m with you
The video addresses this. The biological term “fruit” is not accurate for culinary use. Lots of things we eat are biologically fruit, but you’d get weird looks for calling it a “fruit” while eating it. The video gives a lot of examples of botanical-fruit-but-not-culinary-fruit, including cucumbers, peppers, corn, eggplant, peas, pumpkins, and broccoli (specifically the buds).
“Are red pandas carnivores or herbivores?” “They eat like 80% bamboo, so herbivores.” “Wrong! They are taxonomically in the order carnivora, making them carnivores! Please ignore that carnivore also just means meat eater and herbivore isn’t even a taxonomic clade. People only ever talk to me to get mad at this switching between casual and scientific definitions, I am nothing without it.”
Let’s not forget that apples, strawberries and cashews are pseudofruits, just like the produce of my labor!
knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. wisdom is taking that tomato, pureeing it into a sauce, and slathering it on a well done steak
and slathering it on a well done steak
Burn the heretic!
Or slicing it to throw on a mashed avocado for tasty guacamole
Actually, “mushrooms are technically meat” is a new hill I’d like to die on. Mushrooms have animal cells, ergo, definitely not a vegetable.
They don’t, they’re a distinct third thing with a distinct third type of cells
They are, however, more closely related to us animals than they are to plants. As in, our last common ancestor is less far back.
Also, unrelated to your comment, but related to the post: vegetable isn’t a botanical term, but a culinary term. So, there’s no bioligical basis for vegetable in the first place, so there’s no issue with counting mushrooms among them. Sure, it’s a bit inconvenient that the word ‘fruit’ is both a culinary and a botanical term in English, and there’s overlap to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s somehow illogical that some things are culinarilu fruits but not botanically, and vice versa.
So, there’s no bioligical basis for vegetable in the first place
idk if I would go that far, I think “edible parts of plants” is a solid foundation. Sure, “edible” is kind of a social construct, but the plant part is indisputable. “Vegetarian” and “plant based diet” are near synonymous
Maybe non-animal is better than just plant, since mushrooms are part of plant based diets.
I’ve never been under the impression that any edible plant part is a vegetable. Like, an almond? An apple? Rice? Cinnamon? I could go on. All edible plant parts. I’ve never heard of them be referred to as vegetables.
The controversy isn’t about what they are, it’s about what we call them and which categories we put them in on charts. It’s like arguing over silly group names - is it a murder of tomatoes or a flock?
A salsa of tomatoes.
Food Plant
Technically all fruits are vegetables since a vegetable is just a plant we eat.
As said, for normal people it’s irrelevant to which family belongs what he’s eating, only interesting for botanics and biologists, maybe vegans in doubt if they can eat mushrooms or not.
