the.com/vegetables
the only food group your mother invokes by name and your taste buds by force.
means The edible parts of plants—roots, stems, leaves, and the like—eaten as part of a meal, usually savory rather than sweet.
from From Latin 'vegetabilis,' meaning 'able to live and grow,' built on 'vegetare' (to animate, to enliven) and 'vegere' (to be lively or vigorous)—the same vigorous root that gives us 'vigil' and 'vigor.' Oddly, the word first meant simply 'living, growing thing'; only in the 1700s did English narrow it to the plants on your plate. So a 'vegetable' was once anything bursting with life—an irony not lost on anyone staring down a plate of limp boiled spinach.
- not a thing
- vegetable is culinary slang, not a botanical category
- fruit imposters
- tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers are technically fruit
- broccoli origin
- invented by humans crossbreeding wild cabbage
- carrots once
- originally purple, not orange
- bitter wiring
- kids reject veggies via inherited poison-detection instincts
carrots — root vegetable, china produces 45% of world supply annually
tomatoes — fruit botanically, vegetable legally in us supreme court 1893 ruling
potatoes — staple crop, india is world's largest producer with 50 million tons yearly
broccoli — cruciferous vegetable, california grows 90% of us broccoli supply