The culinary classifications have no scientific basis, but they do have an anthropological basis. They're not completely meaningless.

Who is "we"?

I was basing that on a misunderstanding: I thought that the word "vegetation" being an archaic term meant that it was no longer used, but yeah, I was incorrect there. I appreciate the correction.

Alas, it's all me. I...tend to be a bit verbose.

Oh--and thanks! I think that's praise, at least.

Awesome, thank you for the correction. I appreciate your expert review!

I always heard that biologically vegetables doesn't exist. Everything is fruit. (Except grain, flowers, the obvious)

So what are potatoes? That just a tuberculo.

Carrot? Just a root. Yes it's edible to humans but biologists don't really care because everything is edible to something.

Disclaimer: not a biologist, just a dude tired of people violently interrupting me to tell me that "akschually a strawberry is a nut!!!"

Definitely interesting. I wonder if there might also be a little bit to the fact that botanical fruits are basically just the best way to house seeds so that they'll have some energy to grow when planted, which means that it's independently evolved in a lot of different plants; so the culinary diversity of "fruits" is much greater.

For example, I can't think of any tuber that could sneak into a fruit salad unnoticed.

It’s not whole, but I can definitely imagine tapioca being used to thicken the juice for a fruit salad, and that comes from cassava, a tuber.

For example, I can’t think of any tuber that could sneak into a fruit salad unnoticed.

Some sweet potatoes can be very sweet indeed, and they can be used in sweet dishes too (I've seen for example, sweet potato mash topped with marshmallows). They are just too porous to be used in a traditional fruit salad.

I guess it comes down to there being a lot more variety among fruits than other edible plant parts.

Pulses are incredibly variable too in their usage. You can use them as nuts, vegetables, grains, oil or pastes (sweet and savoury). You can use them in place of potatoes, you can bake bread from them, you can even use them to replace meat in many situations. Young sweet peas can be used almost in place of some fruit as well.

So, who knows, maybe the original cucumber was more “fruity”, but has been tuned over the years to be more “saladey”.

Cucumbers are a kind of pumpkin, same as melons. They are all variations of the same original fruit, and yes, some of them are clearly in fruit-salad territory, while others are more saladey and others again can be used in place of potatoes.

And lastly, the most crazy variable plant is Brassica. Different cultivars of this one plant provide swede, turnip, kohlrabi, cabbage, collard, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, romanesco, Brussels sprouts, mustard seed, rape seed and a lot of smaller, lesser known things too.

I could see water chestnuts in a fruit salad, although they're technically corms, not tubers.

I'm so glad that this problem isn't just limited to English.

ceci n'est pas drole

Oh dang, I hadn't even considered that! I wonder if that's the same across all fruits we tend to eat raw.

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.

A properly grown tomato absolutely can be so flavorful, sweet, tangy, varied, complex... that you could just eat it like an apple.

I am sad to say that, although I've heard of this, I have never had the pleasure of eating such a tomato.

Finally, to throw more insanity on this terminology dumpster fire...

Corn.

As a native son of Indiana, I have to say that's the thing that breaks pretty much all of my categories. I lived the first twenty years of my life thinking that it qualified nutritionally (ugh, that's another part of this terminology dumpster fire...the food pyramid. shudder) as a vegetable, which it...doesn't really.

So... ketchup... is then roughly a tomato/corn smoothie, made primarily from two... frui-getables.

Great point. "Tomato smoothie" is already a term that makes me feel a little bit queasy, but adding in the corn...

Fruigetable.

Beautiful. fɹud͡ʒ.tə.bəl, I think, incidentally.

i can totally eat small flavourful tomatoes on their own, but something about the idea of biting into a larger tomato feels very unsettling to me, i think it's the amount of loose slimy flesh around the seeds?

when the tomatoes are small enough they're just berries, which works fine

I am actually...kind of just like this at parties. So, you be the judge.

That’s a neat site, and I was hoping your answer was in there, but they don’t have data on cooked mushrooms. We’ll have to do a bit of math.

So you’re taking the nutritional data provided and then shunting the fiber and water out of the way. Why? You can’t just eat the nutritional parts of food; you have to eat the whole thing, and that limits the amount of food, and thus nutrition, you can ingest in a day.

Were you thinking about food prep? Some water weight is lost there, certainly, but it’s not everything.

Let’s add a raw steak into the mix, and then we can instead look at how much water weight is actually lost when you prep these things to eat, by estimating it from data elsewhere.

The beans are ready to eat. They’re drained and rinsed. You don’t remove that water weight. So that’s 7 grams of protein per 100 gram serving.

The steak will lose about 25% of its weight when cooked, per multiple sources I found during a search. That means we need about 133 grams of raw beef to achieve 100 grams of cooked beef. So we can multiply its 21 grams of protein by 1.33, and we get about 29 grams of protein in a 100 gram serving. Their grilled steak averages around the same amount, so we’re on track so far.

Why is that discrepancy so great? I thought beans were supposed to be a great replacement for meat?

That comparison was done between beef and dry beans (note the 24 grams of protein, about the same as the beef). 100 grams of dry beans becomes about 370 grams of prepared beans. So in a 100 gram serving of beans you can actually eat, you get just over a quarter of that 24 grams protein: our ~7 grams from earlier. You also lose some water soluble protein when you rinse and drain them. They’re not the magic protein replacement people think they are.

Mushrooms are even worse. Per America’s Test Kitchen (and we’re gonna have to take these numbers at face value because I can’t find anything else), shiitake mushrooms lose about 14% of their weight in water when cooked, and cremini (think portobello, they’re just different stages of development) mushrooms lose about 60%. Thankfully the USDA’s site also has nutritional data listed for these two types of mushrooms: “minimally processed” shiitake and cremini mushrooms contain 2.4 and 3.1 grams of protein, respectively, per 100 gram serving. But those aren’t meal ready. To do that, we’ll cook the mushrooms, and they’ll shrink to 86 gram and 40 gram servings. So let’s start with enough raw mushrooms—119 grams of shiitake (or 119% of the original serving) and 250 grams (250%) of cremini. Multiply our proteins by 1.19 and 2.5 and we get a plausible range of between 3 and 8 grams of protein per 100g serving. So some are comparable to beans in their protein content! And some contain half, or less, of an already low amount when compared to the protein found in meat.

This quick comparison on Wolfram Alpha shows a similar story, with a less optimistic look at mushrooms’ possible protein content. Screenshot:

Now, the fact that you’re taking in so much more water when you eat 100 grams of beans or mushrooms than you are when you eat meat means you can eat more of them, and drink less fluids, but only to a point. And you’re certainly not getting 8 times more mushrooms than beef from a restaurant when they do a protein substitution. Getting enough protein in a vegetarian or vegan diet can be hard work. And restaurants are not making it easier by misleading people who may not know any better—I’m certain it’s careless, not malicious, but it is happening either way.

Fair point haha.

anybody know any other mushroom puns i want free upvotes

It's everybody's celium. Mycelium. Yourcelium. Ourcelium.

Better check your privilegelium

I don't think you can just use two classification systems in the same sentence. It should probably be illegal or something

Is that like an official definition for vegetables from some government? Because I don't feel like there is a particularly good definition of vegetables. People mostly wouldn't refer to apples as vegetables, for example.

lol, very good.