Eating plenty of vegetables, fruit and mushrooms, including a wide variety thereof, is the single most important dietary factor to improve our health.
Importance of Vegetables and Fruit
When we look at the statistical relationship between vegetable and fruit consumption and mortality or disease risk, it becomes clear that the more of them we eat, the more protected we are.
Nutrivore uses the culinary definition of vegetables and fruits, instead of the botanical definition.
Botanically, fruits are seed-bearing structures that develop from the ovary of a flowering plant, while vegetables are derived from any other edible plant part, such as roots, leaves and stems. Botanically, mushrooms aren’t even plant foods, but instead are fungi, an entirely different kingdom of life. By this definition, tomatoes are a fruit, as are squash, cucumbers, peppers, green beans, eggplant, peas, okra, olives and avocado.
Culinarily however, fruits are used in sweet applications and vegetables are used in savory applications. In the kitchen, we treat tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, green beans, eggplant, peas, okra, olives, avocado and mushrooms all as vegetables.
Beyond simply having a savory flavor though, this group of “culinary vegetables that are actually botanically fruits or fungi” are much more nutritionally similar to botanical vegetables than sweet fruits. For example, cucumber is nutritionally similar to celery, and winter squash is nutritionally similar to sweet potatoes. So, it makes sense to classify them as vegetables from a nutrition standpoint. In fact, scientific studies that look at the health benefits of vegetable consumption most often use the culinary definition of vegetables for classification purposes.
Fun historical fact: In 1893, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that an imported tomato should be taxed as a vegetable rather than as a fruit (which were taxed at a lower rate) in the case Nix v. Hedden. In the decision, the court acknowledged that a tomato is a botanical fruit, but prioritized what they called the “ordinary” definitions of fruit and vegetable — the culinary definitions!
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Vegetable Families
Fruit Families
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