We’re told our entire lives by parents, teachers, doctors and other experts that vegetables are good for you, which is why you must eat enough to get the nutrients you need.
But is it true that vegetables exist?
Verdict:
FALSE (Technically.)
This often comes as a surprise to many, but in botanical and biological terms, vegetables aren’t a thing – vegetables are purely a culinary or cultural term used to refer to various edible parts of a plant.
In botany, which is the study of plants, fruits are recognised as the flowering part of a plant that contains seeds (technically making them a plant’s ovary), but vegetables are not so easily defined.
Think about it: if a potato is a tuber, lettuce are leaves, celery is a stem, corn kernels are seeds, broccoli is a flower, carrots are a type of root and tomato is a fruit, then what constitutes a vegetable?
In fact, many of the things that we consider “vegetables” are scientifically fruit, such as cucumber, zucchini, string bean, eggplant, okra and squash. (Don’t get us started on berries – that’s another story altogether.)
So, to botanists, vegetables don't exist. Of course, this doesn’t diminish the health benefits of consuming adequate amounts of veggies – if you try explaining to your mother that you refuse to eat vegetables because they don’t exist, be prepared for a scolding.
References:
1) https://edition.cnn.com/2024/
2) https://www.ice.edu/blog/the-
3) https://www.livescience.com/
