The Ultimate Puzzle: Is Tomato Fruit or Vegetable?
[Look at the tomato. When it ripens, it is red. Its pulp grows from the ovary and is wrapped in delicious seeds. It is exactly the same as the description of “fruit” in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Botany. It is not fruit by virtue of what? ]
The next time you hear someone argue like this, you can refute TA with the following story with confidence.
The story begins with a lawsuit. The plaintiff Nix imported some tomatoes from the West Indies. Hedden, a customs broker in New York Port, imposed a vegetable duty on him. At that time, In order to protect local vegetable farmers, Tariffs on vegetables are relatively high. So Nix took Hedden to court. He believed that tomatoes are fruits from a botanical point of view and he should not levy such high taxes. The lawsuit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the judge ruled that [although tomatoes are fruits from a botanical point of view, the vast number of consumers regard them as vegetables, so tomatoes are vegetables and the customs duty was confiscated wrong].
Therefore, from a legal point of view, tomatoes are actually vegetables!