What is a tomato: is it a fruit or a vegetable? Why were there disagreements in its classification?
In kindergartens, educators explain to babies that sweet fruits growing on trees are fruits. From them they cook compotes and prepare delicious desserts.
And on the beds grow vegetables.They are put in soups and salads, salt, sour, pickle. So simple and logical that there is nothing to add, it would seem. But there is still no consensus on the fruits of this plant.
A bit of history
Родиной томата считается Южная Америка, где он до still occurs in the wild and wild. The Indians called it "math", which means "swollen fruit", and the conquistadors dubbed it differently. The fruits of the first tomatoes they saw were not red, but yellow, and therefore they received the name "golden apple", or "remember".
Считается, что первым в Европу помидоры привез Columbus, by the middle of the XVI century, they began to cultivate as ornamental plants. They were loved for their juicy greens and shiny bright fruits, but they were considered poisonous for a long time. Only by the beginning of the XIX century, people realized that they were dealing with beautiful fruits of their own taste, from which many dishes and sauces can be made. They were sold in the markets and officially ranked as vegetable crops.
But if you look in detail at the structure of tomato fruit and compare it with other vegetables, you will see obvious differences.
What does science say?
Botanists do not ask themselves the question: "Tomato:is it a fruit or a vegetable? "They know perfectly well that this is a fleshy paracarpic multi-caved berry. Tomato fruits - tomatoes - develop from the ovary of the flower and have seeds. According to this characteristic, they fall in a row with peaches, apples and oranges. The true vegetables, according to the authoritative opinion of scientists, are leaf lettuce, cabbage and other plants that people consume before they start to keep their seeds.
Tomato is a fruit!
So decided the European Union in 2001.According to his laws, jams and jams can be produced only from fruits, so the pumpkin, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, sweet potatoes, rhubarb and ginger came to the company for tomatoes. It turns out that the tomato came to the fruit for culinary reasons, and now all European producers can legally manufacture and sell piquant tomato jam with cinnamon, tomato-nut jam and other delights.
The law is that the shaft
There is also no unity of opinion behind the ocean. When in 1887 in America introduced a customs fee for vegetables, one of the tomato producers filed a lawsuit against the tax authorities.
He demanded to cancel the duty, since in fact tomato is a fruit.
In this difficult issue, the Supreme CourtUSA. In the question of what to consider a tomato (a fruit or vegetable) in the distant 1893 was made an unequivocal decision. Without disputing the botanical affiliation in the case of import, the court ruled to consider the tomato a vegetable. He justified his verdict by the fact that tomatoes are usually served with dinner, and not for dessert.
And how are we?
In Russian cuisine, tomatoes are traditionally usedlike vegetables, sweet dishes from them - rather exotic than ordinary. In domestic agricultural literature, tomato is a vegetable, in everyday life it is also called, in grocery stores it lies on the shelves together with other vegetables.
This juicy and very useful product has a lotfans. And it does not matter what the tomato actually is: it's a fruit, or a vegetable, or even a berry. Excellent taste qualities and a lot of use cases in cooking make him a welcome guest on every table.
