Fruit or Veggie?

Question

Is a tomato a fruit or vegetable?

Answer 1

A tomato is a fruit because they consider it a fruit.

Answer 2

If the question were, "is a tomato a food." There would be no problem answering it. The difficulty comes from the popular or common use of the word fruit versus the technical definition used by botanists and other scientists. The technical definition of a fruit is a ripened ovary or reproductive body. Fruits come from flowers, but flowers are not fruits. So the previous answer, "if it has seeds it is a fruit," is mostly correct. The only counter example would be something like seedless grapes or other seedless fruits. What then is a vegetable? Any part of the plant (including a flower) other than the fruit would be considered a vegetable.

Answer 3

A fruit is the flesh and seed resulting from a fertilized and ripened flower ovary. This includes nuts and cereal grains as well as apples, eggplant, and tomatoes. So all flowering plants produce fruit.
Tomatoes in specific are berries because they have their seeds distributed in their flesh. The berry category also includes grape, banana and cucumber.

A vegetable is the stem, root, or leaf of a plant, the non-reproductive parts. These plant parts usually contain or store carbohydrates as starch rather than simple sugars so are not sweet making them useful for savory cooking. Similarly, those fruit that have a low sugar to starch ratio, often used in savory cooking, have come to be called vegetables. In this limited sense vegetable is synonymous with any plant or plant part used as savory food.

Answer 4

Fruit.

Answer 5

The big question to ask is, DOES IT HAVE SEEDS?

If the answer is yes, then technically, you have a FRUIT. This, of course, makes a tomato a fruit. :)

Answer 6

It's a fruit. It's got seeds.