Tomato Justice
Published in
2 min readApr 11, 2016
Vegetable or Fruit
- let’s clear up some controversy once and for all
- it seems to be continually in contention what is a fruit and what is a vegetable
- and the tomato is usually the epicenter of everyone’s confusion
- the reason we’ve got all of this confusion
- is because
- you classify plants differently whether you are a chef or a botanist
- botanically speaking
- a tomato is definitely a fruit
- it is a seed bearing structure that arises from the fertilized ovary of a flower
- it’s also technically a berry
- another mind blowing reality that is not at all part of our colloquial speech
- no one says they’re to pick their berries
- when they’re going out to clear off their tomato plant
- a vegetable is basically any other part of a plant
- like the leaves
- roots
- and stems
- it is part of the vegetative tissues of the organism
- as opposed to fruits
- which are composed of reproductive tissues
- but these definitions are not enough to satisfy some people
- in 1893, the supreme court case Nix v. Hedden brought the tomato conflict to the forefront of the justice system
- the Tariff Act of March 3, 1893 required a tax on imported vegetables but not fruit
- so how was the tomato to be taxed?
- since there was profit involved
- this was a big deal
- it was unanimously decided that the tomato was in fact a vegetable
- the court recognized that the tomato is botanically considered a fruit
- but they decided to go with the colloquial definition of a vegetable
They blatantly ignored taxonomy to appease the vegetable importers.
What a world.