the great tomato debate


The answer, of course, is “yes.”


Botanically, it is unquestionably a fruit:






So, do you want to weigh in the debate?⁴





8 thoughts on “the great tomato debate

  1. The tomato’s fruitness or vegetableness is an issue I am pretty neutral about, though I confess I mainly *use* it as a vegetable.
    However, I had an interesting exchange with my British cousin over email about tomatoes. She said that her partner’s parents had given them a whole lot of tomatoes from their garden. Good Californian that I am, I asked what color they were. “Tomato-colored” she replied, presumably somewhat bemused by my question. I then had to explain to her that in California, that would be a very ambiguous answer, because we have tomatoes in all of the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, purple, pink, brown, and striped. (Okay, I realized that “striped” is not a color.)
    Another tomato anecdote: My father says that his mother used to eat tomatoes with orange juice, olive oil, and salt as a snack. This strikes me as a very non-American snack (she was from Turkey and lived in the Middle East).

  2. Hi Alejna —

    Tomatoes generally taste like vegetables to me — but have you tried Japanese tomatoes? They’re amazingly sweet “as is”.

    Then there are the tomatoes covered in hard candy – a la candy apples — and sold on sticks a la hawthorn fruits, chunks of pineapple, etc. in Beijing night markets. So lovely — and fruit like! :)

  3. I am so disturbed about the idea of anything being derived from “accessory tissues” (in the botanical definition) that I can’t focus on the fruit or vegetable question. Accessory Tissues, on the prowl and muddying the water for Produce Managers everywhere. Like the Avengers, only Nameless.

  4. I think that a tomato, like life, is what you make of it. You want it to be a veggie, it is. You want it to be a fruit, so be it. In the end, what difference does it make how you classify the tomato, just as long as you use the tomato in the best way possible.

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