Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? It has been debated for centuries even though science has proven that tomatoes are actually fruits, even though most of us think of them as vegetables.
But never has it heated up so much between proponents of tomato as a fruit on one side and vegetables on the other as in 1893 when the dispute went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Triple increase in vegetables
Ten years earlier, the United States had passed a tariff law that tripled the tax on imported vegetables, but exempted fruits from this tax. John Nix & Co. was New York’s largest food wholesaler at the time and one of the first companies in the country to begin importing food into the country on a regular basis. Company officials had anticipated that classifying tomatoes as vegetables would cost them huge sums of money in customs duties.
The company therefore took legal action and demanded that the tomatoes be classified as fruit. The case dragged on through the court system for a long time and ended up in the Supreme Court a decade later. Lawyers John Nix & Co. presented three respected dictionaries of the English language and read their definitions of fruits on the one hand and vegetables on the other. Which opponents, on the other hand, questioned. They also cited witnesses, fruit and vegetable sellers for 30 years, who all testified that they were convinced that tomatoes were vegetables.
Fruit or vegetable?
Vegetables in the United States, fruits in Europe
It was beautifully soporific, but also quite funny, going through witness statements where it was discussed whether the pods, the type of seeds, whether the plant in question grows above or below ground, the shape leaves or petals, etc. on, had an effect, and then how much, on how the weed would be graded.
The court also carefully examined the sales reports of the various tomato companies to find out how they had presented the nature of the tomatoes to their customers and whether this explanation had a direct link to the popularity of the tomatoes with consumers.
Judge Horace Gray said the use of words did not seem to have any effect on the popularity of tomatoes because their classification is hardly on consumers’ minds when shopping. The judge thought it was more reasonable to submit dictionaries and reports because the litigation was definitely starting to get boring. He said it was more natural to take into account the opinion of the public, who clearly saw tomatoes as vegetables. When he read his decision, he said the case was not complicated. The public wouldn’t serve fruit with dinner, you wouldn’t find bananas or strawberries next to a steak, you would find tomatoes. On the other hand, tomatoes would not usually be found in desserts, but there would be tabletop varieties of bananas and strawberries.
Tomatoes would therefore be vegetables. Case closed. And although science says otherwise, tomatoes are still classified as a vegetable in the United States. The same story was told in Europe, until 2001, when the European Union officially defined tomatoes as fruits.
So it depends on which side of the Atlantic you are on whether you eat vegetables or fruit when taking a bite of a tomato.
Is ketchup a vegetable?
This was in fact not the first time that botanical definitions had ended up before the Supreme Court.
In 1886 another importer argued that beans were seeds, which were much cheaper to import than vegetables, but lost the case. Beans are classified as vegetables.
The controversy over tomatoes erupted again in 2011 and then in the US Congress.
The Obama administration then put forward proposals for healthier meals in schools, and First Lady Michelle Obama largely led this fight.
According to the proposals, frozen and fried foods should be reduced and a considerable amount of vegetables should be increased in the diet. These proposals were welcomed by many Republican opponents who said Obama and Mrs. Obama had nothing to do with what the children ate for lunch. Also, there would be more than enough vegetables already available in the form of ketchup and pizza sauce, but school children are served pizza in most elementary schools in the United States for lunch.
Michelle Obama campaigned for healthier food in schools.
Obama lost the battle
But some of the bill’s supporters felt that classing tomato sauce and pizza sauce as vegetables was extremely dubious, and a big debate broke out in parliament over whether they were actually giving vegetables to schoolchildren when they sprayed tomato sauce on their fries. Also found in most school canteens.
The makers of the sauces, as well as the makers of frozen pizzas, claimed it was indeed a vegetable and fought to have ketchup, and similar sauces, classified as a vegetable and thus put on the healthy list and school canteens.
Of course, it should be noted that there are endless recipes and types of tomato sauces. Many are certainly made mostly from real tomatoes, but in others, especially the cheaper ones, there’s hardly any tomato. While it’s hard to say anything about anything, it’s more likely than not that schools, who have to save every penny, will be tempted to buy the cheapest product.
Then the Obamas and their people lost the battle, and today the official policy in the United States is that two teaspoons of ketchup on a schoolboy’s plate should be classified as a full serving of vegetables.
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