The Fruit as Vegetable

There is some long-standing confusion regarding classifying tomato as a fruit or a vegetable. Tomato is commonly treated in culinary terms as a vegetable, but botanically it is a fruit.

It develops from the ovary of the plant after fertilisation. The tomato fruit is a berry. It is the edible fruit of Solanum lycopersicum, which is the scientific name of the tomato plant. One can say that scientifically speaking tomato is a fruit, but in popular perception it is a vegetable because tomatoes are more extensively used in savoury dishes than in sweet dish preparations.

Tomato plants are vines and if supported, they grow generally up to 6ft or more above the ground. Tomatoes most commonly come in red and orange colours, but yellow and green coloured tomatoes are also abundant. Unripe tomatoes are often green in colour. Even pink and purple tomatoes are also found. There are around 7500 varieties of tomatoes found! Beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, campari tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, pear tomatoes are some among them traced to the Nahuatl word tomati which gave rise to the Spanish word tomate, from where the English word tomato was derived. According to Wikipedia, Nahuatl is a language or a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

The origin of tomatoes can be attributed to Central and South America. It is believed that people in today's Mexico were the first to use tomato as a food item. The history of its usage can be dated back to the 6th century BC.

The Spanish colonisation of Americas led to the introduction of tomatoes in Europe, during the 16th century. The Spanish people also took tomatoes to the Philippines, and from there it spread to the South-east Asia and then to the entire Asia. It sounds strange that during their initial days in Europe, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous by Europeans. Though recipes made through the infusion of tomatoes can be delicious, its leaves are indeed poisonous. These days, tomatoes are widely consumed throughout the world. In fact, it is one of the most liked food products in the world.