Pluto: fruit or vegetable?
I hope you're all suitably inflamed at the International Astronomers' Union's demotion of Pluto to a 'minor planet' and have gone out to buy your "Honk if Pluto is a planet" bumper stickers. In fact, only 4% of the Union's 10,000 members took part in the vote, which appears to have been hijacked by the "Pluto is not a planet" camp. Pluto's exclusion as a planet hangs upon the third of three new criteria devised to characterize planets - that a planet should have cleared its orbit of neighbouring objects. Pluto was thus penalized because its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of Neptune. But this patently absurd criterion points to the definition's inconsistency, because by this same token, Neptune, not having cleared Pluto off its orbit, shouldn't be a planet either.
So who really cares whether Pluto's a planet, anyway? Well, apart from the fact that we now have to figure out what to do with Colin Matthew's recent Pluto composition to complement Holst's Planets suite (Should it not be played? Should he compose a rival Minor Planets suite?), the whole debacle highlights other inconsistencies we live with on a daily basis.
Take the tomato. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? You may not know that this was actually the subject of an 1893 U.S. Supreme Court case (see Nix vs Hedden). The plaintiffs filed suit against Hedden, a port collector, for wrongful taxes under the 1883 Tariff Act, which imposed levies on vegetables but not fruits. The court ruled in favour of Hedden, judging that although the tomato is botanically a fruit, it is considered a vegetable in common usage (being eaten as a main course rather than a dessert, for example). But what makes a fruit a fruit? In fact, a common definition of a vegetable is "any edible part of a herbaceous plant", which includes the seed-bearing fruit. So by this definition, all fruits should be vegetables. Yet we cling on to this idea that there are such things as "fruits" that are distinct from "vegetables". How does your local supermarket decide that things that are clearly fruits, e.g., squashes, pumpkins and the like, should go in the vegetable section? (I should point out that pumpkins can be eaten both as a main course and a dessert...) Conversely, why are peppers not classed as fruits? And what about cucumbers? Clearly a contender for a fruit. Interestingly, Wikipedia defines "gazpacho" (whose main ingredients - other than stale bread and garlic - are the three aforementioned fruits: tomato, cucumber and pepper) as a cold "salad" (rather than, say, a cold "vegetable soup", which would clearly be contentious), itself defined as a dish, at least one of whose main ingredients must be a raw fruit or vegetable.
But really, if we can't even classify a cucumber right, what hope do we have for a 2000km-diameter, 1 trillion trillion tonne piece of rock flying around the Sun at 5000km per second?
WANTED: The humble cucumber, for centuries masquerading as a vegetable is, in fact, a fruit. Its blandness and versatility enable it to repeatedly evade correct classification of its true nature. Often seen in salads in sliced, cubed or spear forms, its greenish translucent colour has nonetheless helped it to avoid the controversies courted by its tastier fruit-cousin, the tomato. In England, it commonly hides between slices of buttered bread, while in Spain, it seeks camouflage by blending in with other fruits, notably the bell pepper and tomato, inside a cold salad known as a "gazpacho", whose generous helping of olive oil, sherry vinegar and garlic helps to mask its flavour. Rarely seen being crunched on like an apple. The cucumber is wanted on charges of high treason against the fruit-state.
So who really cares whether Pluto's a planet, anyway? Well, apart from the fact that we now have to figure out what to do with Colin Matthew's recent Pluto composition to complement Holst's Planets suite (Should it not be played? Should he compose a rival Minor Planets suite?), the whole debacle highlights other inconsistencies we live with on a daily basis.
Take the tomato. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? You may not know that this was actually the subject of an 1893 U.S. Supreme Court case (see Nix vs Hedden). The plaintiffs filed suit against Hedden, a port collector, for wrongful taxes under the 1883 Tariff Act, which imposed levies on vegetables but not fruits. The court ruled in favour of Hedden, judging that although the tomato is botanically a fruit, it is considered a vegetable in common usage (being eaten as a main course rather than a dessert, for example). But what makes a fruit a fruit? In fact, a common definition of a vegetable is "any edible part of a herbaceous plant", which includes the seed-bearing fruit. So by this definition, all fruits should be vegetables. Yet we cling on to this idea that there are such things as "fruits" that are distinct from "vegetables". How does your local supermarket decide that things that are clearly fruits, e.g., squashes, pumpkins and the like, should go in the vegetable section? (I should point out that pumpkins can be eaten both as a main course and a dessert...) Conversely, why are peppers not classed as fruits? And what about cucumbers? Clearly a contender for a fruit. Interestingly, Wikipedia defines "gazpacho" (whose main ingredients - other than stale bread and garlic - are the three aforementioned fruits: tomato, cucumber and pepper) as a cold "salad" (rather than, say, a cold "vegetable soup", which would clearly be contentious), itself defined as a dish, at least one of whose main ingredients must be a raw fruit or vegetable.
But really, if we can't even classify a cucumber right, what hope do we have for a 2000km-diameter, 1 trillion trillion tonne piece of rock flying around the Sun at 5000km per second?
WANTED: The humble cucumber, for centuries masquerading as a vegetable is, in fact, a fruit. Its blandness and versatility enable it to repeatedly evade correct classification of its true nature. Often seen in salads in sliced, cubed or spear forms, its greenish translucent colour has nonetheless helped it to avoid the controversies courted by its tastier fruit-cousin, the tomato. In England, it commonly hides between slices of buttered bread, while in Spain, it seeks camouflage by blending in with other fruits, notably the bell pepper and tomato, inside a cold salad known as a "gazpacho", whose generous helping of olive oil, sherry vinegar and garlic helps to mask its flavour. Rarely seen being crunched on like an apple. The cucumber is wanted on charges of high treason against the fruit-state.
posted by CCT at 2:19 pm
6 Comments:
FYI...in India they sell cucumbers like fruit at the side of the road, sprinkled with a good dash of salt and red chili powder, and people munch on them like apples. Does the fact that it's savoury make it a vegetable and not a fruit? Things to ponder, indeed!
hmm... that doesn't sound terribly appealing! Although I can see the whole salty, cool, spicy thing going on there. Interesting...
Do the cucumbers turn wet and slimey due to the hygroscopicity of the salt?
oh, you're using very long words now... "hygroscopicity"?? I think you need to get out more....
Perhaps india girl would like to comment on the effect of salt on the cucumbers?
Due to my paranoia about contracting horrible gastrointestinal diseases, I haven't ever eaten a cucumber on the road in India. But having observed others, I can say that they don't appear to become slimy. Remember that Indian cucumbers aren't as long as English ones - they are more like Japanese or pickling cucumbers, and are usually consumed in 2-3 bites...okay, 4-5 if you are being polite!
I took your advice and got out for dinner. This is what I saw...
Whilst dinning at my favourite Indian Pub one night last week, I saw a girl dusting salt and red chilli powder on her sliced cucumber! She marinated salad in the sprinkle for several minutes and no visual changes were observed on the surface of the sliced cucumber!
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