Most people know that fruits and vegetables’ nomenclature are different in cooking vs. science. You probably heard as a child that “fruit is anything with seeds,” and started wondering if everything you’d thought was a vegetable all your life was a lie. Fruits and vegetables are both very healthy, but they often provide different nutrients. Here are some great “culinary” vegetables that are actually fruits, just in case your inner child is still wondering.
String Beans
The beans inside of bean pods are actually seeds, so any veggie you eat that’s comprised of peas and a pod is really a fruit. That includes soybeans, snap peas, snow peas, and green beans.
Avocado
Pits in fruit usually function as or contain seeds. We don’t often relate avocados to peaches and plums, but they contain a pit just like stone fruits. However, stone fruits have pits to protect their seeds rather than the pit actually being the seed, so they don’t fall into the same species of fruit. But they are indeed fruits.
Tomatoes
Most people actually know tomatoes are fruit, botanically cut them open and you immediately see all of their seeds. But what you may not know is that tomatoes are legally vegetables: in a supreme court case over vegetable import taxes, they were ruled a vegetable. So culinary trumps botany in the eyes of the law!
