• Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    6 months ago

    Recently, we were in the canteen at work and a colleague, who moved here a few years ago, told that she never had rhubarb before.

    Then she asked me, probably just for vocab reasons: Rhubarb is a vegetable?

    Uhh…

    I had never thought about it. I mean, what the heck is this:

    Could be a salad, a leafy green. It’s kind of similar to celery, but is celery even a vegetable? Well, and of course, rhubarb is often used like a fruit, so uh…

    Well, I looked it up, and scientifically, it does count as a vegetable, but colloquially, it’s often considered a fruit.

    • prime_number_314159@lemmy.worldEnglish
      153·
      6 months ago

      Like today’s computer scientists, early biologists sucked at inventing new words, and simply reused existing ones. “Berry” in common language is a small, usually sweet and edible, fruit. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries are all berries.

      Then biologists came along and decided, actually, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are out, but watermelon and bananas are in, because the size of the fruit doesn’t matter, only the placement of the seeds decides whether something is a proper, scientific berry.

      A similar thing has happened with “fruit” and “vegetable”, where scientific fruits include cucumbers, eggplants, and pumpkins. Luckily, all three of these are also berries.

      I say we ignore them, and use words to mean sensible things.

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    6 months ago

    You refuse to eat bugs because they are “disgusting and gross”

    I refuse to eat bugs because I love them too much. We are not the same.

  • doingthestuff@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    I have a very open view towards food that is served to me (in good faith). If you honor me by serving me a meal you enjoy I will eat it, whatever it is. If you serve me live cockroaches while laughing I’m not going to say what I’d do, bad faith gets bad actions. But I never choose to eat shrimp unless they’re served to me. I ate some last week unfortunately. In context, it wasn’t terrible.