The Rest Is Science What's The Most "Vegetable" Vegetable?
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Mar 10, 2026 A playful investigation into what makes a plant piece feel like a vegetable, mixing botany, linguistics and food law. They tour plant anatomy, odd classifications like tomatoes and cinnamon, and cultural quirks that shape our supermarket logic. The discussion ends with a surprising, everyday winner crowned for plainness and versatility.
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Botanical Definition Makes Many Vegetables Fruits
- Botanically, 'vegetable' isn't a scientific category; botanists treat vegetables as edible plant matter and reserve precise terms like 'fruit' for ripened ovaries.
- Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens explain fruit = ripened ovary, so many culinary vegetables (tomato, cucumber, peas) are botanically fruits.
Least Sexual Plant Parts Score Highest Vegetableness
- Using 'least sexual' plant parts as a criterion, the most vegetable vegetable would be tissues unrelated to reproduction such as bark or roots.
- Michael proposes cinnamon (bark) and Hannah questions edibleness and ethics of harvesting bark.
Supreme Court Declared Tomato A Vegetable For Tariffs
- A 19th-century US Supreme Court case ruled tomatoes are vegetables for tariff purposes because they are eaten with dinner, not dessert.
- The court prioritized 'common parlance' over botanical classification to decide tax status.