Botanically speaking, is a peanut a fruit or a vegetable?

Question

And, is peanut oil better for you than "vegetable oil"?

Answer 1

A peanut is a fruit. Don't believe me? check the site out under sources

Answer 2

Fruit.

Legume
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The term legume can mean either a plant in the Family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit of these plants. A legume fruit is a simple dry fruit which develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces (opens along a seam) on two sides. A common name for this type of fruit is a "pod", although pod is also applied to a few other fruit types. Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lupins and peanuts. A peanut is not a nut in the botanical sense; a peanut is an indehiscent legume, that is, one whose pod does not split open on its own.


Anything that comes from a flower or contains seeds is a fruit.
A pea pod is a fruit. A tomato, any squash, a cucumber, a green pepper, these are all fruits.

You might think that the peanut is a seed, but it is more like a pea pod, and a pea pod, is a fruit.


When I was a kid in Florida, they had boiled peanut stands on the side of the road. Nothing better than a boiled in the shell peanut.




As for your oil question:

You need good fats...By good fat, I mean non-saturated fat - both polyunsaturated and monounsaturated.

Really good fats/oils come from UNREFINED vegetable sources or oily fish. Here are some basic guidelines for how to choose the best type of fat.

- For cooking, choose extra virgin olive oil
- For salads, choose from flax oil, canola oil, soy oil, extra virgin olive oil, wheatgerm oil, walnut oil, hemp seed oil.
- Eat regular helpings of oily fish like salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna.

Note: Flax seed oil, hemp seed oil, canola oil and oily fish are great sources of one of the key essential fatty acids, omega-3.

Peanut oil is about 50 percent monounsaturated and 30 percent polyunsaturated.

The generic term "vegetable oil" when used to label a cooking oil product refers to a blend of a variety of oils often based on palm oil, corn, soybean or sunflower oils.

Answer 3

Peanuts belong to the bean, pea and lentil family. It is a legume. It is not in fact a nut at all. Considering that other legumes are labled vegetables it can correctly be seen as a vegetable. How ever it is more commonly known as a nut by the general population. It is doubtful that this will change.
Peanut oil is very similar to vegetable oil but is reported to contain more flavour. What it does have is more calories then regular veg oil so use it sparingly if you have weight concerns.

Answer 4

Technically, since most seeds (the pea, the kidney bean, the soy bean) are defined as vegetables, the peanut would be a vegetable. A fruit is the fleshy part of a plant which Contains seeds. (the tomatoe and cucumber are fruits).

Sunscour... if you'd read a little further down that page, you'd have seen that it's the POD that is called a fruit, not the seed itself.

Edit: In the below text you will find that any non-seed bearing plant part consumed by humans, to include the seeds themselves, are considered to be vegetables.

“Vegetable is a culinary term. Its definition has no scientific value and is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. All parts of herbaceous plants eaten as food by humans, whole or in part, are generally considered vegetables. Mushrooms, though belonging to the biological kingdom, fungi, are also commonly considered vegetables…Since ‘vegetable’ is not a botanical term, there is no contradiction in referring to a plant part as a fruit while also being considered a vegetable. Given this general rule of thumb, vegetables can include leaves (lettuce), stems (asparagus), roots (carrots), flowers (broccoli), bulbs (garlic), seeds (peas and beans) and of course the botanical fruits like cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, and capsicums.” (Wikipedia.org)

Answer 5

A peanut is DEFINITELY either a part of a fruit (if you are just referring to the 'nut') or the whole fruit (if you are referring to a peanut in a shell). This is the official scientific/botanical definition. Sure, you can call it whatever you want - chefs/nutritionalists tend to commonly refer to non-sweet fruits as vegetables, but this is technically incorrect.

DEF of a fruit? A ripened ovary or seed-bearing container from a plant.

Answer 6

I beleive a peanut is a legume, considered more of a vegetable. definitely not a fruit

peanut oil is not bad as long as you don't use it over and over again so that it becomes transfatty.

Answer 7

"Peanuts, along with beans and peas, belong to the single plant family, Leguminosae. Legumes are edible seeds enclosed in pods. As a group, they provide the best source of concentrated protein in the plant kingdom. While their physical structure and nutritional benefits more closely resemble that of other legumes, their use in diets and cuisines more closely resembles that of nuts."

Answer 8

I believe its a fruit. What I got on the page below seems to suggest that, and also offers that it is a Seed technically. Some interesting basic stuff

-Cheers

Answer 9

It is an oily edible seed-
a low-growing annual plant of the legume family whose seeds are peanuts.

Answer 10

A peanut is a bean (legume like peas or green beans) so it is a vegetable.