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Posted March 26th, 2021 by Fruidel Team

Interesting Fruity Fact – A tomato is a fruit

The confusion arose after the 1890s when the US supreme court named them a vegetable for taxation purposesBotanically, Tomatoes Are Fruits

Botanically, Tomatoes Are Fruits

According to science, tomatoes are fruits.

All fruits have a single seed or many seeds inside and grow from the flower of a plant (2).

Like other true fruits, tomatoes form from small yellow flowers on the vine and naturally contain a multitude of seeds. These seeds can later be harvested and used to produce more tomato plants.

Interestingly, some modern varieties of tomato plants have been intentionally cultivated to stop producing seeds. Even when this is the case, a tomato is still considered to be the fruit of the plant in botanical terms.

They’re Often Classified as a Vegetable

Much of the confusion about whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable comes from the common culinary applications for tomatoes.

Cooking is as much an art as it is a science, which tends to give way to more flexibility for how different foods are categorised.

In cooking, tomatoes are usually used alone or paired alongside other true vegetables in savory dishes. As a result, they’ve earned a reputation as a vegetable, even though they’re technically a fruit by scientific standards.

This was the method of classification used by the US Supreme Court in 1893 during a legal dispute with a tomato importer who argued his tomatoes should be considered fruits to avoid the higher vegetable tariff.

It was during this case that the court ruled the tomato would be classified as a vegetable on the basis of its culinary applications instead of its botanical categorisation as a fruit. The rest is history.

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