Is the Tomato a Fruit or Vegetable?
Is the Tomato a Fruit or Vegetable? Although we use tomatoes as vegetables, they are actually classified by botanists as fruits. The word “fruit” usually describes any fleshy part of a plant that has developed from a flower and has seeds.
(Vegetables are foods from the leaves, stems, roots, and other edible parts of a plant.)
There is an interesting fact about this tomato question: because the tomato is used in soups and is served in many ways as a vegetable in the main part of a meal, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893 classified the tomato as a vegetable for the purposes of trade.