
Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't - praveenscience
https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/bananas-are-berries.htm
======
ath0
Because this is Hacker News, the discussion would be incomplete without a link
to the Supreme Court case Nix v. Hedden[1].

After the Tariff Act of 1883 taxed vegetables (but not fruits), produce seller
John Nix — no relation to the package manager — sued to get tomatoes
classified as a fruit.

The court held that the “common meaning” mattered more than the botanical one:

“Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are
cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the
people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables
which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw,
are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage,
celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup,
fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not,
like fruits generally, as dessert.“

If you’re in New York, you can celebrate Nix’s memory by eating at a fancy
vegetarian restaurant[2], or, of course, you can just use the package manager
or operating system.

[1]
[https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/304/](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/304/)
, or see the wikipedia page
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden)
[2] [http://www.nixny.com/](http://www.nixny.com/)

~~~
lhotiuerpoiu
I eat tomatoes like apples (with salt, I'm not a monster). No kink-shaming
please.

~~~
globuous
Yes !! Tomate à la croque au sel as we call'em !! First time I ate a tomato
like that in the US, my american friends made so much fun of me "yo, no way
brooo ! he's eating a tomato like an apple, da'fu !! Weird frenchman !!".

I still eat my tomatoes like that every so often, it's so good ! Although I
think I end up eating quite a bit of salt when I do that which isn't so
good...

~~~
nkozyra
In my head the biggest problem with this is that tomatoes are very liquidy and
that seems like a very messy proposition.

Obviously, sliced tomatoes with salt is a relatively common breakfast side
item, so the idea of just eating tomato with salt isn't that uncommon in the
U.S.

~~~
Shivetya
fyi

Waffle House, one of the larger chains of grill made food offer sliced
tomatoes as a side in place of hash browns. I have no found that offering
elsewhere. So it makes me wonder how it made to the menu

~~~
nkozyra
Interesting, I've found it to be a pretty common side item at breakfast places
and delis.

------
dmos62
I find the article pleasant in its writting and humour. For me this goes to
show that thin clickbait articles can be interesting, it's just that most
people who can write don't usually do clickbait. Excerpt:

> The technical definition of a berry is "a fleshy fruit produced from a
> single ovary." If you're not too familiar with botany, this definition
> probably isn't helpful at all. But once you learn that oranges and tomatoes
> fit that definition to a T and could therefore be considered berries, you
> may start to question reality.

> Go a step further and find out that strawberries — yes, those delicious red
> fruits with "berries" literally in the name — aren't officially berries
> either. They're "accessory fruits," meaning the flesh that surrounds the
> seed doesn't actually come from the plant's ovaries but from the ovaries'
> receptacle. Didn't think we'd be talking so much about ovaries in this
> article, did you? By the way, raspberries aren't really berries either. I'll
> let you take a minute to collect yourself.

~~~
mikorym
And of course the technical definition supersedes the use of the word "berry"
in the English language...

~~~
edflsafoiewq
I'm curious how the botanical definition came about. I believe "berry" comes
from a word that means "grape" (which are berries in the botanical sense).

In Middle English, everything that wasn't a berry was an "apple". A banana was
an _appel of paradis_ , apple of paradise.

~~~
yesbabyyes
This still lives on; in Swedish for instance, orange is _apelsin_ , which
comes from "apple from China". Pomegranate comes from "pomme", French for
apple, and "granatum" meaning it has many seeds (grenade actually comes from
the fruit, because it looks like one).

Potatoes are "pommes du terre" in French, meaning "earth apples", and French
fries are "pommes frites", fried apples.

Or just freedom fries.

------
mrleiter
There's a very good video on this [1] by Innuendo Studios on why this
discussion is more or subjective, since it matters in what context you say it
and what you mean by it.

He does this with the example of a tomato, which by botanical defintion is a
fruit. But in culinary terms, it is a vegetable. So when someone says "haha,
did you know that a tomato is actually a fruit", it's subjective and can
almost have no added value in a discussion. Botanists know it's a fruit. Cooks
know the taste of the tomato and will use it accordingly. Hence, nothing is
gained. Except confusion and unnecessary discussion.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmxIK9p0SNM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmxIK9p0SNM)

~~~
hnhg
There is one thing to gain: an easy lesson in how things can be subjective. I
believe the world suffers because many people profoundly reject this.

~~~
bernardlunn
People who write code for robot compilers (aka programmers) often make this
mistake. People who write code for human compilers (aka writers) embrace the
subjectivity/variability of those human compilers

~~~
toyg
You forget one subcategory of writers: _lawyers_ (and their subcategory
_legislators_ ). They _definitely reject_ variability of interpretation as
much as they can, or at least try their hardest to.

~~~
GavinMcG
I think lawyers fundamentally _premise_ their work on the variability of
interpretation. They make arguments in favor of certain interpretations, and
take pains in the texts they write to preempt any undesirable interpretations.

Legislators may or may not think like writers/lawyers, but even if they do
they're constrained by those who don't, the need for compromise, and the
incentive to have gotten something done even if it's not perfect. So they
sometimes end up doing a bad job of legal writing.

------
theBobBob
I remember hearing some super cliched but kinda funny saying one time:

"Knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you
shouldn't put it in a fruit salad."

~~~
w-m
That makes me wonder how tomato in a fruit salad would actually taste.

~~~
singlow
Not bad actually. But if you mix grapes and little tomatoes that look like
grapes it can be fun not knowing what you'll taste on each bite.

------
monadic2
Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly
use berry in a different way than botanists do.

~~~
blowski
It's just wordplay, a basic pun, because the same word, "berry", appears in
two different contexts. In everyday usage, a strawberry is a berry, but in
botany it's not.

If you're doing botany, you should probably use the latin term _Fragaria_
instead of strawberry.

Edit: If you like this, you'll also find interesting that many nuts
(hazlenuts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pecans, almonds) are not nuts but seeds. One
of the few actual nuts is a chestnut.

~~~
scandinavegan
Also, coffee beans are not beans, but the pit (that usually comes in two
parts) of the coffee fruit. It's the same with cocoa beans, but with 30-50
seeds per fruit.

~~~
Finnucane
The coffee fruit is a berry. We just don’t ordinarily consume the skin and
fleshy part.

~~~
masklinn
> We just don’t ordinarily consume the skin and fleshy part.\

Do you mean they're edible?

~~~
stan_rogers
That depends on what you mean by "edible". Coffee cherries aren't particularly
pleasant, at least not for human tastes, but they're strictly edible. Palm
civets seem to like 'em, but not enough to make kopi luak cheap.

~~~
sitharus
The cheapness is mostly because the civets are kept in cages and only fed
coffee cherries
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-
luwak-captive-civet-coffee-Indonesia/)

------
mcv
That strawberries are not true berries becomes fairly obvious once you learn
that tomatoes are berries. All berries seem to have fairly watery flesh
surrounded by a thin but tough skin. Tomatoes have both, strawberries have
neither. Raspberries superficially look like a collection of tiny berries from
this perspective. Bananas have a skin, but it's not thin, and their flesh is
not watery.

That's just my layman's analysis, though. It's suited me well for many years,
but if now eggplants and peppers are also berries, I'm starting to wonder
whether the word berry even means anything.

~~~
ragazzina
>All berries seem to have fairly watery flesh surrounded by a thin but tough
skin.

The point of the article was that bananas are berries though, and your
definition doesn't really describe bananas (maybe kiwis).

~~~
mcv
I know. I'm just sharing my definition, which is completely subjective and
holds no authorative value. It works for me, though.

Kiwis are a bit hairy to be berries, but they feel closer to berries to be
than bananas.

------
robbrown451
Yeah and cucumbers are fruit, birds are dinosaurs, ladybugs are not bugs,
peanuts are not nuts, etc.

Sometimes I think that scientists should just stick to taxonomic categories or
other words that don't conflict with their "common usage" meanings.

(and while we all seem to agree that whales aren't fish, they are certainly
within the "bony fish" clade
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteichthyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteichthyes)
and are a lot closer relatives to a goldfish than are sharks :) )

~~~
bustadjustme
.... whales certainly aren't bony fish. They're in class Mammalia, which is
not within the superclass Osteichthyes. I.e. they're mammals, not fish.

~~~
robbrown451
Mammals are tetrapods, which are indeed under Osteichthyes (unless you
consider Ostreichtyes to be paraphyletic).

If you look at the cladogram on the wikipedia page I linked, you see a picture
of a salamander near the top representing the category Tetrapodomorpha. We
(and whales) are also on that branch. Sharks are outside of that whole
cladogram, as they are cartilaginous fish. ( * )

In other words, any clade which includes all bony fish also includes mammals.

[*] which means that the most recent common ancestor of sharks and goldfish
lived longer ago than the most recent common ancestor of whales and goldfish

------
tgb
Similarly, the botanical definition of "nut" excludes basically everything we
think of nuts. Pedants seemed to have learned that peanuts are "not nuts" but
have yet to pick up on that almonds, pistachios, walnuts and pecans are also
"not nuts."

~~~
bena
Because most people who like to throw around such pedantic facts only want to
appear informed and by extension intelligent.

------
sdiq
Read the article and the botanical classifications of some of these fruits
feels like a weirdly broken and clearly unacceptable "it-works-as-intended"
bug. The classifications should in many ways align with the every-day use of
the same words. That is, unless the language changes so much that most of the
same words end up meaning an opposite of what they historically meant, or
something completely different from the same. In that case, the botanical
classification could be kept.

------
nmeofthestate
Looks like no-one has posted this yet:

[https://www.mrlovenstein.com/comic/643](https://www.mrlovenstein.com/comic/643)

------
d--b
The scientific name is bad, it confuses everyone. Why not change that instead
of telling people that berries aren't berries?

~~~
mrweasel
Then you'd have to redefine what a berry is. Do we just have a list of things
that are berries? If so, who get to define that list? What if you forget one?
Would that thing then not a berry anymore?

You'd could also try to make so criteria that defines berries, but that's what
we already have, even though it tells us that strawberries aren't berries. We
could make new ones, but how do we ensure that bananas becomes fruit,
strawberries should be a berry and peas and corn should definitively not
become berries?

For daily usage it fine that we don't see bananas as berries and that tomatoes
certainly shouldn't go into a fruit salad, even if it's technically a fruit.

~~~
zokier
> Then you'd have to redefine what a berry is.

Why? I don't see pressing need for a waterproof definition. I'd think for
general use "I know it when I see it" definition suffices, and for where
exactitude matters having explicit list is better anyways

------
mehrdada
Potato plant produces a berry too, but the actual fruit is toxic.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_fruit)

~~~
8note
if I remember correctly, the potato itself is toxic raw

~~~
mnw21cam
No. Cooking doesn't reduce the amount of toxin in potatoes very much. Potatoes
are toxic when _green_ , although this varies massively among the varieties.
But a general rule to follow for potatoes is if they are green then don't eat
them.

------
jmull
Not really a great article because it mostly perpetuates the confusion rather
than clears it up.

Context determines whether a strawberry is a berry or not. In common usage it
is. Using a scientific horticultural definition it is not. Context usually
determines which definition of berry applies implicitly, though if you're
communicating in a context where you think it's reasonably ambiguous, you can
be explicitly about which definition you're using.

------
gumby
And Tomatoes, by ruling of a Massachusetts court, “are a vegetable for tax
purposes”

~~~
ovi256
And Congress ruled that tomato pizza sauce is a vegetable for nutritional
purposes. Don't you feel well legislated ?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/did-
congr...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/did-congress-
declare-pizza-as-a-vegetable-
notexactly/2016/04/01/95bbbe3a-13f6-11e1-9048-1f5352187eed_blog.html)

~~~
swebs
Wow did you even read the title of the article you posted? Here it is:

>No, Congress did not declare pizza a vegetable

Congress decided that 1/8th of a cup of tomato puree counts as a SERVING of
vegetables. Not A vegetable. You're just intentionally saying something stupid
in order to attempt to project that stupidity on someone else.

~~~
gumby
Actually ovi256 explicitly did refer to the sauce.

------
elcomet
In french, we have the word "Baie", which means berry, but is not widely used
for fruits, and we also have another expression which is much more used,
"Fruits rouges", literally "red fruits". I think it covers more accurately
fruits like raspberries, strawberries, and others. I don't know if "red
fruits" is also used in english.

~~~
simonh
Yp, we have that as well but it's very informal, you won't usually see it on
product packaging but at home I'll ask one of my kids for a glass of 'red
juice'. 'Forest Fruits' is a common generic name for a mix of red berry juices
or fruits.

~~~
elcomet
I see. Here, it is usually on the packaging (and we never see berry). We say
'Forest fruits' as well.

------
loriverkutya
And strawberries are also not straws. It's all a lie.

------
sammorrowdrums
The distinction between different domain terminologies is prescient for
software development.

[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/359604](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/359604)

Especially when there is conflict between domain terminology and coding
concepts.

For example my company at large refers to Booleans (meaning search expressions
that are vaguely Boolean in nature in our sense, that job boards enable for CV
searching).

Ultimately mutual understanding trumps being correct in my view.

That said, when I have to weigh vegetables in supermarket I still pause before
selecting the vegetable category to weigh tomatoes.

------
walterkrankheit
I wish this article went a bit deeper. I still don't feel like I have a
primary grip on WHY the non-berry items ended up with berry names to begin
with. Bananas, okay, late-period adoption, but the rest?

------
rasz
2010: EU subsidizes fisheries. France wanted in on the action. European
Commission has officially categorized snails as "inland fish" in order to
allow French snail farmers to receive subsidies.

2002: Fruit jams are subsidized in EU. Portugal makes carrot jams. Guess what,
carrot is a fruit in EU. Let me cite that for you:

'tomatoes, the edible parts of rhubarb stalks, carrots, sweet potatoes,
cucumbers, pumpkins, melons and water-melons are considered to be fruit'

------
rob74
One of the many questions the article leaves open is what (if any) fruit
called "berries" are actually berries? I did some quick research, and
apparently cranberries, blueberries, lingonberries and huckleberries are also
"botanical berries"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry#Botanical_definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry#Botanical_definition))...

------
leeshire
any reason why rasberries and strawberries have the words berries in them
then?

~~~
thaumasiotes
The word "berry" goes back to proto-Germanic. Outside the context of botany,
it means "small fruit". (And even in the 9th century, it meant "small fruit",
though at the time it was more strongly associated with grapes than it is
now.)

Carl Linnaeus lived in the 18th century. The botanical sense of "berry"
developed from the ordinary sense -- almost certainly because someone was
investigating "what do all these berries have in common?", and picked a trait
that identified the largest number of small fruit.

You can see the same thing happening with "fish". Starfish and jellyfish are
not "fish" in a taxonomic sense, but they are things that live in the water.
In Chinese, octopuses and crocodiles are also "fish". (章鱼 and 鳄鱼, where 鱼 by
itself is "fish".)

~~~
mcv
In Dutch, whales ("walvis") are fish. But jellyfish and starfish aren't.
Squids ("inktvis") are.

------
Digit-Al
An example of why creating classification systems is such a PITA.

------
zby
The classic: Strange Times for the Berry Club:
[https://meme.xyz/meme/21615](https://meme.xyz/meme/21615)

------
willis936
I’m surprised this is news to anyone. Context always matters. Is the
conventional wisdom that there is Not two dichotomies for produce: culinary
and botanical?

------
hansbo
I read up on these things some time ago, and what amused me the most is that
while almost every vegetable is a fruit, the Juniper berry is, in fact, a
cone.

~~~
Angostura
> almost every vegetable is a fruit.

I think you'll need to clarify that a bit - most vegetables are roots, leaves,
flowers or stalks.

~~~
hansbo
Fair point - almost every vegetable plant _has_ a fruit, but not every
vegetable is.

------
anotheryou
I'd like a line drawn between "wants to be eaten" and not :)

Than strawberry would be a fruit, cucumber would be, roots salaa etc not.

------
tomphoolery
A banana is a sandwich. Change my mind.

------
xorand
Btw, you know that spiders are not insects?

~~~
Koshkin
Is it because they taste different?

~~~
xorand
No, all insects have 6 legs
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect).
Spiders have 8.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider)

