What makes a vegetable different from a fruit?

Question

I was just wondering because I had heard facts that always questioned whether a tomato was a fruit.
Is a tomato really a fruit?

Answer 1

A veggie is actually a supermarket-created term that means nothing. Veggies and fruit are very similar, having seeds, etc, and there aren't any biological differences. Veggies and fruits should all be under the "fruit" category, meaning the have flesh that covers seeds inside (if you see them or not).

Answer 2

A fruit is actually the sweet, ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant. A vegetable, in contrast, is an herbaceous plant cultivated for an edible part (seeds, roots, stems, leaves, bulbs, tubers, or nonsweet fruits). So, to be really nitpicky, a fruit could be a vegetable, but a vegetable could not be a fruit.

Most fruits are sweet because they contain a simple sugar called fructose, while most vegetables are less sweet because they have much less fructose. The sweetness of fruit encourages animals to eat it and thereby spread the seeds. An interesting list of fruits that are often thought to be vegetables:

tomatoes
cucumbers
squashes and zucchini
avocados
green, red, and yellow peppers
peapods
pumpkins

http://www.yesmag.ca/Questions/fruit_veg.html

http://www.hort.cornell.edu/extension/question.html#1

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/teach/msg011956409905.html

Answer 3

I heard somewhere that a fruit is anything that dosen't kill the pant you are taking it off of. Like if you pick an apple the tree still lives but if you pick a carrot the whole plant dies, but I also found this on a hoticulture website.

":The difference between a fruit and vegetable depends largely on your perspective. From a botanical perspective, a fruit is the mature ovary of a plant, such as an apple, melon, cucumber, or tomato. From the common, every day "grocery store perspective," we tend to use the word fruit with respect to fruits eaten fresh as desserts - apples, peaches, cherries, etc. - and not to items cooked or used in salads. So, tomatoes tend to be lumped in with vegetables because of the way they are used (cooked and in salads), but botanists will call them fruits because they develop from the reproductive structures of plants. The California legislature once passed a law declaring tomatoes a vegetable in order to impose a tariff on Mexican imports!"

Answer 4

Fruits are basically sweet, but the vegetable have different taste, some have sour taste, some vegetables are bitter too.

Generally, a fleshy growth originating from a flower and carry seeds is considered a fruit so tomato can be a fruit or vegetable. So a gourd or cucumber or pea pod is a fruit too.

Answer 5

A tomato was declared a fruit because it develops from a flower and contains seeds within itself.

Answer 6

vegetables don't fight back, lol.
I think it has to do with their flowering, but I'm not too sure.