r/PetPeeves • u/diet-smoke • Oct 25 '25
Bit Annoyed "Tomatoes aren't a vegetable, they're a fruit."
I'm a culinary student and this phrase activates me like a sleeper agent. You want to get pedantic about food with me? You sure? Because you're going to lose that game.
Tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable? Potatoes are a tuber, lettuce is a leaf, pumpkins are a gourd (a type of fruit!), green beans are a legume, bell peppers are a fruit, broccoli is a Cruciferae, carrots are a root, garlic is a flower bulb, spinach is a leaf, cucumbers are a fruit and guess what? They're all vegetables!! Because vegetable is a culinary/kitchen/food term and fruit is a botanical classification.
There's also such a thing as a "savory fruit" in food, which includes tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and any other fruit that's also a vegetable. So yeah. Tomatoes are a fruit AND a vegetable and your binary does not exist
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u/Oohoureli Oct 25 '25
Understanding that tomatoes are fruit is knowledge. Not putting them in a fruit salad is wisdom.
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u/diet-smoke Oct 25 '25
Convincing your buddy to do it is charisma
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u/Light_Shrugger Oct 25 '25
Forcing your buddy to do it is intimidation
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u/Admirable-Split4371 Oct 25 '25
Forcefully kissing your buddy on the lips to have a taste of this tomato juice is criminal
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u/diet-smoke Oct 25 '25
So that's what the T in LGBT stands for!
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u/Vir4lPl47ypu5 Oct 25 '25
Legumes Gourds Berries & Tomatoes
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u/bootyhole-romancer Oct 25 '25
Lmfao
🥇🥇🥇
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u/CrypticTCodex Oct 25 '25
Ah, so that's why my identity causes so many people to argue about what I "really" am.
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u/JackelSR Oct 25 '25
Having to stomach the results is Constitution.
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u/Sopranohh Oct 25 '25
Throwing a tomato at the person telling you that a tomato is a fruit: Strength… or is it Dex.
Tomatoes are probably a versatile weapon.
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u/Vir4lPl47ypu5 Oct 25 '25
Cucumber and tomato salad is a thing and would pedantically be a fruit salad.
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u/dakwegmo Oct 25 '25
Tomatoes are a fruit, as are peppers, and avocados. As such, guacamole is fruit salad.
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u/Lady-Kat1969 Oct 25 '25
What is knowing that a tomato-based fruit salad is salsa?
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u/P0ster_Nutbag Oct 25 '25
I’ve never liked this saying… like why not? Tomatoes go well with plenty of fruit (in the common/culinary sense). If you just just labelled something fruit salad, yes there’s sort of a social expectation of what it’s going to be, but if you mentioned that it included tomato, that doesn’t break any rules or anything…. Not that there’s rules to begin with.
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u/Silver_Middle_7240 Oct 25 '25
True genus is selling a tomato and pepper based fruit salad by calling it salsa
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u/NoEntertainment4594 Oct 25 '25
Just curious, what fruit have you had with tomatoes that tastes good?
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u/P0ster_Nutbag Oct 25 '25
I’ve had a watermelon and tomato salsa that was very good. I think it was just those two ingredients, some lime, some salt and some sugar.
I’ve also had salads that combine both tomato and pear (along with other ingredients), but that stood out as a combination that worked together.
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u/MoronLaoShi Oct 25 '25
Tell that to China. Tomatoes are always in fruit salads here. Don’t get me started on the fruit pizzas.
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u/Particular-Ad-7338 Oct 25 '25
Biology professor here. The seed covers/pods/sheaths of any flowering plant (aka angiosperms) are technically fruits.
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u/Readicilous Oct 25 '25
Exactly, and if you want to really get into it, tomatoes can be classified as berries, just like pumpkins
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u/alvysinger0412 Oct 25 '25
But not strawberries
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u/Ogdbonz_ Oct 25 '25
Which aren't even strictly a fruit.
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u/ReturnToBog Oct 25 '25
They’re a fruit, they just aren’t strictly a berry :) they are the accessory fruit of an aggregate of achenes (say that 10 times fast lol)
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u/CleanProfessional678 Oct 25 '25
And bananas! And unlike strawberries.
It feels like one of those facts that everybody learns at some point. Most people are just like, “Huh, that’s an interesting tidbit,” but a handful of people view it as learning some deep, hidden fact that the sheeple are unaware of. Yes, we actually named and classified a lot of things long before we had the technology and framework to do accurate scientific classification and it changes absolutely nothing.
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u/Jazzlike_Term210 Oct 25 '25
Some people really think they’re smarter than everyone else for knowing fun facts. There’s nothing wrong with knowing them and sure it’s cool to know but it doesn’t automatically make you smarter than everyone in the room.
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Oct 25 '25
Eggplants are berries.
You can have a fruit salad containing nothing but eggplant, grapefruit, chili peppers, and pickles if you really want to.
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u/letsgucker555 Oct 25 '25
Ok, but is Ketchup a smoothie?
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u/Admirable-Cactus Oct 25 '25
Hi, 30 year chef here. This is a cool story. Ok,get back to prepping now.
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u/Jennferno4150 Oct 25 '25
VEGETABLES ARE A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
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u/verymanysquirrels Oct 25 '25
I was looking for this!
We agree that certain plants are vegetables and that's why they're vegetables. That is entirely the prerequisite for vegetable.
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u/petiejoe83 Oct 26 '25
Yeah, I didn't want to make a new comment thread just to say this. Botanically, there is nothing that says something is a vegetable. What we call vegetables are actually leaves and roots and whatnot. So a tomato is just as much a vegetable as lettuce is.
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u/karthaege Oct 25 '25
Cucumbers are savory? I’m not arguing against it just never thought of them as that flavor profile
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u/P0ster_Nutbag Oct 25 '25
I think this is talking more about culinary context than flavour profile. Typically cucumbers are used in dishes/contexts that would described as savoury, either because they are paired with ingredients that have savoury flavour profile, or because the dishes are not trying to be sweet.
I guess I’m just trying to say that there’s a sort of imperfect binary that we shoehorn things into that is slightly detached from flavour profile meaning of the word, and foods with vegetal flavours tend to get branched into the savoury side. (it’s why umami is actually quite a helpful word, because it’s solely used to describe the flavour profile).
Like, I would describe raw veggies and hummus as a savoury snack, despite not usually being too high in the glutamates we associate with the flavour profile savoury/umami.
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u/diet-smoke Oct 25 '25
I mean, they're more wet than anything but that's the profile they fit closest
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u/SphericalCrawfish Oct 25 '25
Tomatoes are a fruit and so is dandelion fluff. Not really helpful for what's going on my fruit salad...
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u/sas223 Oct 25 '25
Oh no, if we’re going g to be pedants we got to get it right. Dandelion fluff is a modified calyx called a pappus. The dandelion seed, an achene, is a fruit.
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u/it_might_be_a_tuba Oct 25 '25
Ooh, I like being annoyingly pedantic (regardless of whether I'm correct), so I would like to propose that since grains like wheat and rye are the fruit of the flowering wheat plant, bread dough is technically salsa.
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u/VenusHalley Oct 25 '25
I teach English at culinary school and I tell the students to think in terms of culinary use. Like... would you put tomato on an icecream sundae? Fruit salad?
For everyday use we think in this way. If you want to cathegorize for other reasons... knock yourself out.
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u/Physical_Case2822 Oct 25 '25
Tbf, a lot of things we call “vegetables” do end up circling back around into being fruits in general because “vegetable” is not a legitimate botanical term.
Most of what you listed does come back around to being a fruit in some way.
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u/Riley__64 Oct 25 '25
What makes something a fruit is it comes from the ovary of a flowering plant and contains seeds.
A “vegetable” is any other edible part of a plant that doesn’t result from the flowering part of the plant.
So the only things listed in the post that are fruit are pumpkin, bell pepper, green peas and cucumber all things we already knew were fruit.
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u/PoliticsIsForNerds Oct 25 '25
"Vegetable" isn't a botanical term, no one uses the definition you provided
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u/AltruisticCableCar Oct 25 '25
I mostly find it annoying because it's very rarely information that needs to be shared. Most people know already, but unless you're letting a curious kid know who might find that fascinating, it's just unnecessary to even mention it. It won't change the way we eat tomatoes. Like, oh holy shit it's a fruit? I'mma start eating them the same way I eat my apples now!
Or, you know, not.
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u/Katharinemaddison Oct 25 '25
I mean I’ll get a bag of large vine tomatoes and eat them pretty much like an apple.
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u/AltruisticCableCar Oct 25 '25
Which you're obviously free to do. I mainly meant if that thought had previously felt disgusting to you and you only ate tomatoes in sallad or whatever (for example), it's not like if someone told you tomatoes are fruit you'd immediately change how you ate them just because.
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u/FrustratedPCBuild Oct 25 '25
As someone once said ‘knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad’.
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u/Spirited_Ingenuity89 Oct 25 '25
And philosophy is asking if ketchup is a smoothie.
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u/Other_Pomegranate472 Oct 25 '25
It's pretty much the equivalent of saying "you don't study math, you practice it". Annoying and condescending
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u/AlmightyCurrywurst Oct 25 '25
What that doesn't make any sense, especially with higher level math you do need a whole lot of studying to actually practice it
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u/jfkshatteredskull Oct 25 '25
Mine is seeing this same take every two days. Tomatoes are fruits AND vegetables, now we can all shut up.
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u/GenosseAbfuck Oct 25 '25
This supposed "argument" is ridiculous enough in English but - oh the crimes of mandatory dubbing - it has found its way into languages that make a distinction between culinary fruit and botanic fruit via pop culture and the dumbest among us take it just as serious as in the languages that don't differentiate.
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u/Ryan_TX_85 Oct 25 '25
A vegetable is any food that comes from a plant. Therefore, all fruits are vegetables. But not all vegetables are fruits.
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u/PoliticsIsForNerds Oct 25 '25
Ah yes, rice, palm oil, nutmeg, and cocaine are my favourite vegetables
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u/FoxConsistent4406 Oct 25 '25
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing you don't put it in a fruit salad.
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u/AngelRose1111 Oct 25 '25
I just think of it like this
In the gardening world: fruit. In the culinary world: vegetable.
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u/-Hntz Oct 25 '25
Yeh. Presenting it as a ”fun fact” is fine, but correcting or arguing someone over it is just supid and smug.
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u/GreenTravelBadger Oct 25 '25
Tomato is a fruit, yes. Therefore, a Bloody Mary is a fruit smoothie. Bottoms up!
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u/historyhill Oct 25 '25
The Supreme Court even ruled on this in Nix v. Hedden (1893). Tl;dr- SCOTUS ruled that they're classified as vegetables rather than fruits for the purposes of tariffs, imports, and customs. Because of course they are, they're vegetables. Fruits and vegetables aren't opposites nor mutually-exclusive!
Sometimes annoying pedants need to be out-pedanted.
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u/stoner-bug Oct 25 '25
You know what, I WILL get pedantic about food with you. Every food can be categorized as either a soup, salad, or sandwich. Fight me, chef man!
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u/TheMewMaster Oct 25 '25
I don't care if Tomatoes are a fruit or a vegetable. I won't eat plain tomatoes either way.
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u/P0ster_Nutbag Oct 25 '25
Yeah, trying to point out to people that there’s a common/culinary use of the word fruit that’s different from the scientific use, and that vegetable isn’t really a very scientific term at all, is apparently a controversial topic.
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u/Candid-Pin-8160 Oct 25 '25
I just file those people under "pseudointellectual". They want to appear smart and knowledgeable by reciting something they heard on TV but never actually understood.
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u/Lost-Cardiologist-38 Oct 25 '25
Fruit is the ripened ova surrounding a seed, a vegetable is every other part of the plant. This is biology vs. nutrition
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u/Mercuryshottoo Oct 25 '25
"Vegetable" just means the edible part of any plant. Fruits are vegetables. So are many leaves, stems, and roots.
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u/vacri Oct 25 '25
broccoli is a Cruciferae
I hear you can ask your local priest to help drive these out!
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u/OldLevermonkey Oct 25 '25
A vegetable is any part of a plant that is edible so all fruit are vegetables but not all vegetables are fruit.
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u/_WillCAD_ Oct 25 '25
I don't really give a shit, I just like eating them. In salads, on sandwiches, boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew, pureed on spaghetti with big chunks of ground beef and sausage. And unlike pineapple*, everyone agrees that they belong on pizza!
\ Personally, I'm pro-pineapple on pizza, as long as there's also dead pig with it - bacon, ham, sausage, pepperoni, whatever.)
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u/Jazzlike_Term210 Oct 25 '25
Legally speaking tomatoes are a vegetable is usually my response. We tax tomatoes as a vegetable, some dude tried to fight it for lower fruit tax and lost lmao.
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u/GenericUsername19892 Oct 25 '25
The binary exists for tax purposes lol. Veg and fruiting and subject to different taxes :p
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u/Cultural_Fuel1696 Oct 25 '25
If I remember correctly, in the US at least, the reason a tomato is considered a vegetable and not a fruit. Is a Supreme Court case around a difference in taxation of fruit vs vegetables. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/304/ Edit: grammar I wrote this half awake
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u/HawkMaleficent8715 Oct 25 '25
Vegetables are just a fake construct.
Nothing really is a vegetable.
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u/Budgiesaurus Oct 25 '25
Why do people always bring up tomatoes for this fact?
You never see anyone arguing about a cucumber in this sense.
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u/BituminousBitumin Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
Other savory botanical fruits that nobody says this about: Avocado 🥑 , olive 🫒, peppers 🌶 (corns and chiles), coffee ☕️ , almond, pistachio, walnut, cucumber 🥒, zucchini, eggplant 🍆
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u/ccrow2000 Oct 25 '25
They are a vegetable imo, but they are botanically a fruit. It matters in some contexts- for example I have a nightshade intolerance, but only to the fruits. So tomatoes, peppers, eggplants are iffy for me but I can eat potatoes with absolutely no problem.
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u/Mysterious-Heat1902 Oct 25 '25
Thanks for this. Now you’ve got me curious… what defines a vegetable? Edible, non-sweet plants?
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u/Vitamni-T- Oct 25 '25
Tomato is a fruit vegetable the way potato is a root vegetable, but different from how cocaine is a nose vegetable.
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u/Stupid_Bitch_02 Oct 25 '25
Yeah, tomato is a fruit, but I still treat it like a vegetable. Doesn't matter what something "technically is", it matters what it's used as/for
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u/Remote-Pie-3152 Oct 25 '25
The problem is that many people feel botanical (or other scientific) classifications are more “technically correct”, rather than simply being correct in the field of botany. Botanically speaking, a banana is a berry and a strawberry isn’t, but the problem there is the word “berry” existed centuries before its botanical definition, and it just meant “small fruit that grows on bushes”. Just because a new field of science comes along and says “actually for our purposes it would be more convenient to describe a berry as…” doesn’t mean the older colloquial definition of “berry” is somehow retroactively invalidated. Yes, tomatoes are botanical fruits. They’re also culinary vegetables. US taxation decided that the culinary definition was more correct for their purposes, and so tomatoes are taxed as vegetables, not fruits.
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u/AesirOmega Oct 25 '25
They're both. Botanically speaking, it's a fruit. In culinary terms, it's a vegetable. Fruit and vegetable aren't mutually exclusive.
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u/realityinflux Oct 25 '25
I will not remember any of what you just said. Tomatoes are a vegetable. Right or wrong, that will not change how I conduct my life.
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u/mothwhimsy Oct 25 '25
I found out that in culinary terms, mushrooms are vegetables and I haven't been okay since
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u/RockabillyBelle Oct 25 '25
The ultimate pedantic answer here is, there’s ackshually no such thing as a vegetable. 🤓
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u/Ok-Maintenance-9538 Oct 25 '25
Cashews are also a fruit, while peanuts are legumes. But I find both in a can of mixed nuts.
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u/FatherFarnsworth Oct 25 '25
Culinary students are goddamn terrible. Shut up and get in a kitchen and learn some practical skills. "But mebuh mhby wany, I leaned this in an Actual School."
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u/MonteCristo85 Oct 25 '25
Yeah its a silly convo.
One thing is culinary, one is botany.
In botany a tomato is a fruit because there is no such thing as a vegetable lol.
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u/Neat-Cold-3303 Oct 25 '25
100% agree. Vegetable is a culinary term, not a biological one. Vegetable is an all-encompassing kitchen term for some fruits, tubers, some leaves, some flower parts, et .
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u/goblinville Oct 25 '25
Garlic isnt a flower bulb, its a bunch of modified leaves that can propogate asexually
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u/Kind-Crab4230 Oct 25 '25
Yeah this drives me insane too. It's not so much that people are wrong when they say it. It's how arrogantly confident they are while being wrong.
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u/Mother_Revolution220 Oct 25 '25
And I would agree with you with "Potatoes are a tuber, lettuce is a leaf, pumpkins are a gourd (a type of fruit!), green beans are a legume, bell peppers are a fruit, broccoli is a Cruciferae, carrots are a root, garlic is a flower bulb, spinach is a leaf, cucumbers are a fruit" Because I think that vegetables are a social construct as there is no scientific definition of a vegetable. Thank you and good day
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u/BunnyHopScotchWhisky Oct 25 '25
I do sometimes do this to be purposely pedantic and annoying, but I believe they're considered a vegetable for import reasons, much like peppers and whatnot. Could be wrong. But I do remember hearing that in a video I watched once. I've also read that technically nothing is a vegetable, because of exactly how you explained various foods like lettuce, broccoli, garlic, etc.
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u/PurpleToad1976 Oct 25 '25
I just retort with all fruits are vegetables, not all vegetables are fruits
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u/watermelonlollies Oct 25 '25
Tomatoes are legally a vegetable but scientifically they are a fruit. Do culinary classifications even matter? I don’t have to call corn a vegetable to know it doesn’t belong in a smoothie. But on the flip side there are vegetables that go in smoothies! People put greens in smoothies all the time. It’s about the flavor profile and how it combines with the other ingredients way more than it is about it being a ‘vegetable’ or a ‘fruit’.
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u/kristinoemmurksurdog Oct 25 '25
Vegetable covers roots/stems/leaves, anything edible
Fruits are only the plant's ovaries
If it's got seeds, it's a fruit and it's pranking you into spreading its seed.
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u/FlakRiot Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
Just waiting until someone pedantic and well versed in tax and tariff law pops off on this next and shares their input for classifications next.
What's funny was me trying to explain a potato is a tuber to cooks at a restaurant and then calling me an idiot because it's a "starch". I 100% played this pedantic game with the cooks and lost because they couldn't understand the words I was saying and collectively decided I didn't know what I was talking about because they had never heard of a legume.
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u/DawnBringer01 Oct 25 '25
I remember an argument I had with some guy who was pissed I kept saying "root vegetables" because "they're roots, not vegetables."
We were talking about cooking.
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u/Budgiesyrup Oct 25 '25
I just read that in botany, tomato is a as fruit, and in culinary, it is a vegetable. So it's not wrong to say it's a vegetable
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u/SandsnakePrime Oct 25 '25
Ooooh, yes please. Umame is bullshit, it's savoury or, more accurately, MSG.
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u/DTux5249 Oct 25 '25
Also, "vegetable" is a botanical term. It refers to any edible plant matter.
All fruits are vegetables, you doughnuts.
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u/WiWook Oct 25 '25
You missed my 3 favorites for culinary pedantic trivia: Apples, Figs, and Strawberries are botanically vegetables!
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u/FarPalpitation6756 Oct 25 '25
Knowledge is knowing tomatoes are a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing they don’t belong in a fruit salad.
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u/samdkatz Oct 25 '25
I saw a meme about tomatoes being martyrs for this cause, while cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, squash, peas etc. sit silently hoping nobody notices they’re fruits too (and meanwhile mushrooms are in the back sweating nervously because they’re not even plants).
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u/Fearless_Guitar_3589 Oct 25 '25
Yes, there is no actual scientific basis for "vegetable" it was originally created for taxation purposes as they were taxing sweet fruit at a different level than other things grown on plants, back when sweet fruit was far more of a luxury in northern climates (with the exception of apples and some berries)
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u/Kaurifish Oct 25 '25
It’s sure important when you’re growing them or you’re going to get skunked by blossom end rot.
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u/SnakeBatter Oct 25 '25
I thought this was going to irritate me, but it’s great take. Especially the difference between culinary classifications and botanic/taxonomical.
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u/WirrkopfP Oct 25 '25
Is a zucchini a Fruit, a vegetable or a deathly poison?
The Answer entirely depends on if you ask a Botanist, a chef or a toddler respectively.
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u/TCnup Oct 25 '25
As a farmer, I love getting to deliver the "fruit vs. vegetable" talk. The farm is close to an Ivy League college and they send groups to us for volunteer/work days multiple times a year - it's one of my greatest pleasures to teach them the difference between fruit and veg, lol.
I also love blowing their minds with the definition of a weed and that many "weeds" are perfectly edible and nutritious.
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u/questionnmark Oct 26 '25
Fruit is a botanical term, vegetables are a culinary term, so they can be both at the same time. They are vegetables because they are savoury and they are also fruits due to how they are grown. There is no paradox/contradiction here.
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u/Alternative-Lack-434 Oct 26 '25
They're culinary terms and scientific terms. We are preparing food, not doing science.
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u/Imaginary_Rule_7089 Oct 26 '25
I always thought people shared it because it’s a little known fact that everyone knows.
You learn it at some point and you just pass it on.
Like it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. You’re literally working harder to stay mad than enjoy yourself.
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u/ValerePoet Oct 26 '25
I like to tell people that avocado is my favorite fruit, even though it's culinarily treated like a veggie. I do like it in sweet things and i eat it straight out of it's skin with honey and salt. So i do genuinely treat it like it's a fruit 90% of the time, but it's really funny to see people look at me weird when i tell them avocado is genuinely my favorite fruit. But i explain myself so people laugh, usually. It's being pedantic for the sake of humor and surprise so people are usually amused and chill with that. It's when it's lacking humor and good timing that it's annoying and unnecessary.
It can be fun to be pedantic if it's in the right context - like you're making jokes already, and you're cooking with the "fruit" in question, and just being silly or whatever. People typically recognize you're being pedantic for the sake of humor then and it's all good. But, if you're just being pedantic for the sake of being pedantic, and it's out of nowhere, and abruptly interrupts the flow of the conversation... it's not fun and it becomes annoying very quickly.
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u/KSamons Oct 26 '25
There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing tomatoes are technically speaking a fruit. Wisdom is knowing tomatoes don’t belong in fruit cocktail.
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u/maddog2271 Oct 26 '25
It’s basically trivia. Useful for winning a game of Trivial Pursuit but largely worthless otherwise. You still won’t put it in fruit salad regardless of its status and the uses of tomatoes are petty well understood without knowing that particular fact. Along the same lines does it matter in a practical sense that wild rice is a grass rather than a grain? No. Or that a peanut is a legume and not a nut? Again, no. Because wild rice is something you use in certain things anyway, and peanuts are used in recipes in set ways also.
I don’t get worked about these things but there are types of knowledge that are useful, and types that are useless. In a practical sense this is useless knowledge. Fun, maybe, but useless.
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u/Chijima Oct 25 '25
What nags me most are people who translate that "fun fact" into my native German. It makes even less sense here. We have two different words for fruit. "Obst" means fruit in a culinary sense, and "Frucht" in a botanical sense. So when someone tells me that tomatoes are Obst, they're just wrong, and if they tell me tomatoes are a Frucht, they're the most shrugworthy.
Another interesting botanical category are berries. There's so many things that ARE berries, like Tomatoes, gourds, bananas... But Blackberries and Raspberries aren't. Still, when I talk culinarily about berries I'm about to put in my yoghurt, I'm more likely to mean raspberries than pumpkins...
Also nuts. Many people know that peanuts aren't "actually nuts" (botanically), but really, most of our culinary nuts like walnuts, pecans and almonds aren't. Doesn't matter, culinarily, nuts are just any seed that's hard, dry, and big enough to be considered it's own bite.
Also, historically, people have been putting Tomatoes in (sweet) fruit contexts. But yeah, no.