the.com/vegetable
a botanical lie we tell ourselves at dinner — half these are technically fruit.
means An edible plant or part of a plant — root, stem, leaf, or otherwise — eaten as part of a meal, usually savory rather than sweet.
from From Latin 'vegetabilis,' meaning 'able to grow or live,' which itself springs from 'vegetare,' 'to animate or enliven' — the same lively root behind 'vigor' and 'vegetate.' Originally the word meant simply 'growing, living' and applied to all plant life; only later did it narrow to the things on your plate. So a vegetable was once anything that grew with vital force — a far grander notion than a humble carrot.
- no science
- vegetable is culinary, not a botanical category
- court ruling
- US Supreme Court legally declared tomato a vegetable
- same plant
- broccoli, kale, cauliflower are one wild cabbage
- carrot color
- carrots were purple before Dutch made them orange
- toxic raw
- raw kidney beans and potatoes can poison you
carrots — root vegetable, china produces 45% of world supply as of 2023
tomatoes — fruit botanically but vegetable legally (us supreme court 1893), india produces 19.7 million tonnes annually
potatoes — staple crop, peru has 4,000 native varieties in andean highlands