Frugt eller grønt?

Billedet er taget af Gergerger7.

Jeg har fået et spørgmål om, hvorfor jeg kalder mine grøntsager for frugter, og det gør jeg, fordi tomaterne er tomatplantens frugter. For at underbygge mit argument kommer et par citater fra Havenyt.dk svar på, om en tomat er en frugt eller en grøntsag:

Skelnen mellem frugt og grøntsager er et almindeligt tilbagevendende spørgsmål. Er en agurk og en tomat ikke netop frugter i traditionel forstand med kerner, mens et salathoved og en porre klart er at rubricere som grøntsager, på grund af bladet eller plantestænglen? Sagen er, at der skelnes på to forskellige planer, hhv. det gastromisk–kulturelle, og det rent botaniske. Det korrekte svar er som delvist givet, at f.eks tomat, squash og agurk er begge dele; frugterne bruges bare som grøntsager.
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Grænsen er flydende og det er plantens traditionelle anvendelse, der afgør rubriceringen. Derfor er det svært at skelne præcist og endegyldigt. En grøntsag er en betegnelse, der primært dækker urteagtige planter, som anvendes i større mængder til direkte føde med ernæring for øje; de er oftest uden udpræget sødlig smag.
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En frugt defineres botanisk som et planteorgan, der indeholder frø; kort sagt, dét der bliver tilbage efter bestøvning, befrugtning og afblomstring. Herefter deles vandene i mangfoldige former, frøstande, farver og strukturer. Gastronomisk kategoriseres frugt endvidere på grund af et traditionelt højt sukkerindhold, kulturel desertbrug eller anvendelsen til småspiseri drevet af den søde tand.

Min klassifikation af tomater som frugter er et levn fra biologi i gymnasiet, og på mit layout er det et resultat af, at jeg synes, det lød hyggeligere med skønne røde frugter end skønne røde grøntsager. Jeg håber, at det besvarede spørgsmålet fyldestgørende ;o) Hav en dejlig onsdag.



I got a question regarding my labelling tomatoes as fruits and why I continued to do so. It stems from my high school biology classes and from a sense of fruits being a "cuter" label than "vegetable" in scrapbooking terms.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia dealing with whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables:

Botanically, a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant: therefore it is a fruit. However, the tomato is not as sweet as those foodstuffs usually called fruits and, from a culinary standpoint, it is typically served as part of a salad or main course of a meal, as are vegetables, rather than at dessert in the case of most fruits. As noted above, the term vegetable has no botanical meaning and is purely a culinary term. Originally the controversy was that tomatoes are treated as a fruit in home canning practices. Tomatoes are acidic enough to be processed in a water bath rather than a pressure cooker as "vegetables" require.

This argument has had legal implications 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 the 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 (Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304)).[33] The holding of the 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 than for paying a tax under a tariff act.

Tomatoes have been designated the state vegetable of New Jersey. Arkansas took both sides by declaring the "South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato" to be both the state fruit and the state vegetable in the same law, citing both its culinary and botanical classifications. In 2006, the Ohio House of Representatives passed a law that would have declared the tomato to be the official state fruit, but the bill died when the Ohio Senate failed to act on it. However, in April 2009 a new form of the bill passed, making the tomato the official fruit of the state of Ohio. Tomato juice has been the official beverage of Ohio since 1965. A.W. Livingston, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, played a large part in popularizing the tomato in the late 1800s.

Due to the scientific definition of a fruit, the tomato remains a fruit when not dealing with US tariffs. Nor is it the only culinary vegetable that is a botanical fruit: eggplants, cucumbers, and squashes of all kinds (such as zucchini and pumpkins) share the same ambiguity.