Does the approach to Thanksgiving in the US always raise significant questions? What will happen to the turkey? Mashed potatoes with cranberry sauce or green beans? And that’s why the controversy arises, because some are screaming heresy because green beans… are not a vegetable! US website Mashable picked up the topic again this week, anticipating heated debates such as: “But what happens if at the Thanksgiving table your fussy cousin insists that green beans can’t be a fruit because they’re a bean? »
“What?” You will tell me what kind of culinary dictate this is, even though you have been shelling green beans with your grandmother since early childhood in the family home in Perche for the Sunday roast? You will have to get used to it, but green beans are both a fruit and a vegetable “Fruits are structures that contain seeds,” Toby Adams, director of the Edible Academy of the New York Botanical Garden, as quoted by Mashable. “And green beans are, essentially, a pod containing seeds,” he assures.
This also applies to France. “Technically” a fruit is always a product of a flower. This is the edible organ of flowering plants that follows the flower and protects the seeds, cores and seeds,” reminds the Ministry of Agriculture. “If we are inclined to call it a vegetable” because it is not sweet, green beans are indeed a FRUIT, just like a tomato, avocado, eggplant, pepper, pepper, cucumber, squash. or even olive,” the ministry recalls.
The American botanist also explains that green beans are a “dried fruit,” meaning that when they are fully developed, the pod dries out and splits open to reveal a ripe seed.
The Supreme Court intervened
So what explains the widespread myth that green beans are a vegetable? Well, just terminology! In fact, the term “vegetable” is not used by botanists at all. On the other hand, it is used commercially by grocers and other food industry players, typically for identifying salty foods or in savory recipes.
As proof, the thing is even formalized in the very heart of American law, and it was the tomato that served as the head of the gondolas in this legal matter. Because yes, tomatoes fruit (see French Ministry of Agriculture definition above), botanically the same as green beans. In fact, these are even berries…
But in 1893, a fruit importer argued before the Supreme Court that tomatoes should be classified as fruits, not vegetables, as the Port Authority of New York had ruled. (The importer hoped to avoid the 10% tax then levied on imported vegetables). But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes were still “vegetables” in the culinary sense—primarily because the terms “fruit” and “vegetable” had no consistent definitions in the agricultural world at the time. The fruit of ambiguity over the centuries.
Source: Le Parisien
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