this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Microblog Memes

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 43 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Vegetables aren’t actually a thing though. Just a bunch of things we grouped because we like eating them.

[–] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (3 children)

There's no such thing as a fish

[–] nilclass@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

True. They are just water based government drones, to keep tabs on the mermaid population

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[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Yes there is. Taxonomists aren't the only people who give meaning to words

[–] grissino@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"Taxonomists aren't the only people who give meaning to words"

Eloquently put! You've expressed a feeling that I have had for a while now and couldn't quite put into the appropriate words! Thanks 🙏🏼

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[–] MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (8 children)

*within taxonomy, I think most people can conceive of a fish in colloquial terms.

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[–] bss03@infosec.pub 2 points 3 days ago
[–] procrastitron@lemmy.world 93 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

My stubborn position is that all fruits are vegetables.

Anything that comes from a plant (vegetation) is a vegetable.

EDIT: Reading up on the case, they apparently didn’t treat fruits and vegetables as disjoint sets but rather with fruits as a subset of vegetables. So far, so good…

HOWEVER, they also apparently ruled that tomatoes don’t count as a fruit because they aren’t eaten for dessert…

Wow… just… wow.

[–] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 64 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Fruit is a scientific term. Vegetable is a culinary term.

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 82 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Fruit is also a culinary term that is not identical to its meaning as a scientific term

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There we go. A tomato can be a fruit and not a fruit at the same time.

[–] Ihnivid@feddit.org 5 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Oh cool, now we can namedrop Schrödinger into this to give an even more educated impression.

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[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 26 points 4 days ago (25 children)

because they aren’t eaten for dessert

This sounds to me like a reasonable way to disqualify something as a culinary fruit.

Folks like to make a big hullabaloo about tomatoes being technically a fruit, but no one gives a second thought about referring to peppers, cucumbers, green beans, eggplant, avocado, pumpkins & other squash, or corn on-the-cob as vegetables even though they are all technically fruit.

And I was being picky there, because beans, peas, grains and nuts are all also technically fruit. Heck, lots of “nuts” like peanuts and cashews aren’t even really nuts.

Keep your taxonomy out of my kitchen:

  • Fruit are sweet.
  • Vegetables are not.
  • Grains make bread.
  • Herbs and spices add a lot of flavor with a little bit. Herbs are the green ones.
  • nuts are. They just are. Don’t think about it too hard.
[–] geissi@feddit.org 5 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Fruit are sweet. Vegetables are not.

Carrots, caramelized onions?

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[–] dogsnest@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (4 children)

As a former worker at a steel plant, I concur.

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That's not really a stubborn position. That's definitively true.

All fruits are vegetables; not all vegetables are fruit.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Botanically is there such thing as a "vegetable"?

[–] sunbytes@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago
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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"Fruit" within culinary is usually applied to "sweeter" forms of fruits, and the more savory forms usually get called "vegetable" instead regardless of being botanically called fruits or not.

[–] sunflowercowboy@feddit.org 8 points 3 days ago

Tomatoes are sweet

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Stupid meme. Many other countries also classify tomatoes in with vegetables for various commerce regulation and taxation purposes. That case was just capitalists trying to get out of paying tariffs by nitpicking the definition of a tomato

I hate these things where people twist reality just so they can make a cute "Americans are so dumb" meme. If you want to bash the US, there are plenty of relevant topics to choose from for criticism. Better yet, read a book once in a while instead of just scrolling the internet and grabbing random shit that's gone viral.

And BTW, what's a fruit or vegetable is not some objective Sacred Truth that science "discovered", it's that science came up with a system of categorizing plants that people deemed to be useful for the study of Botany, just as legislators came up with a slightly different classification useful for taxation, and regular people also classify them in a way that's useful for cooking purposes. This is not a situation where Science! is an almighty God. It's just ways of sorting things. "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] jimjam5@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

This made me chuckle more than it should have

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[–] Nougat@fedia.io 28 points 4 days ago

Botanical vs culinary. Different contexts; different definition per context. There is not a problem here.

[–] JayObey711@lemmy.world 16 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

It doesn't matter why are you roleplaying as a botanist if you don't see that culinary definitions and scientific classification are two separate things. One is really useless for the average person and the other is probably also a foreign concept to everyone having quirky discussions about whether cakes are hotdogs or smoothies, because they are the type of people to tweet a 60 page essay about why expecting neurodivergents people to cook their own meal should be considered a hate crime.

[–] MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Tomatoes don't belong in a fruit salad

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[–] NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Because Fruits were taxed higher than vegetables, so importers started listing them as a vegetable.

It's tax dodges all the way down.

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[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Just a list of items we normally think of as veggies, but actually fruit: cucumbers, squash, peppers, eggplants, avocados, pumpkins.

[–] Kacarott@aussie.zone 4 points 3 days ago

The real misconception is that people conflate culinary terms with biological terms.

Are actually fruit

No, they are culinary vegetables. They are also biological fruits. AFAIK "vegetable" does not even have meaning in biology

[–] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Plus they make the national drink...ketchup.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So is ketchup technically a jam?

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[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 4 days ago

Vegetable isn't even a botanical definition.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This leaves out the modern extension of this where pizza meets the requirements of a vegetable due to it containing 2 tablespoons of tomato paste as specified in the "Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012", previously the "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010".

Thanks Obama

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Like when the state of Indiana [attempted to change] the definition of pi

[–] ebolapie@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Almost changed the definition of pi. It passed the House, but a professor from Purdue happened to be in the Statehouse on unrelated business the day the Senate voted on it. He managed to convince enough Senators that it was a terrible idea and they absolutely roasted it on the floor.

The Wikipedia article on it is great. "Legislative History" is the interesting bit. My favorite part is this:

An assemblyman handed [Prof. Waldo] the bill, offering to introduce him to the genius who wrote it. He declined, saying that he already met as many crazy people as he cared to.

[–] FantasmaNaCasca@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

"(...) he already met as many crazy people as he cared to."

My spirit animal.

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