Fruit or Vegetable....What do you think?
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. However, the tomato has a much lower sugar content than other edible fruits, and is therefore not as sweet. Typically served as part of a salad or main dish of a meal, rather than at dessert, it is considered a vegetable for most culinary uses. Tomatoes are not the only food source with this ambiguity: avocados, eggplants, cucumbers and squash of all kinds (such as zucchini and pumpkins are all botanically fruits, yet cooked as vegetables.
This dispute has led to legal speculation in the United States. In 1887, U.S. tariff laws that imposed a duty on vegetables, but not on fruits, caused the tomato's status to become a matter of legal importance. The U.S. Supreme court settled this controversy on May 10, 1893, by declaring that the tomato is a vegetable, based on the popular definition that classifies vegetables by use, that they are generally served with dinner and not dessert .The holding of this case applies only to the interpretation of the Tariff act of March 3, 1883, and the court did not purport to reclassify the tomato for botanical or other purposes.
