Fruit? Vegetable?

I knew that there would be a problem teaching my special education class this week the instant I laid eyes on the worksheet that the head teacher wanted me to use. It sounds simple: he wanted to test the understanding of the students by giving them a worksheet depicting many fruits and vegetables and having them circle the answers when I say, for example, “red fruits.”

I started panicking a bit when I saw that tomatoes were one of the items of produce from which they could select. Crap. If I were to say “circle the red fruits,” would I have to count it wrong if they omitted the tomato? If I say “brown vegetables” and they circle the mushroom would I count it wrong because a mushroom is not a vegetable, but a fungus? What definition did the teacher want me to use? Culinary classification, which considers whether something is a fruit or a vegetable based on taste, or botanical classification, which defines a fruit as an edible plant containing seeds?

I’m about to go a bit Bill Nye on all of you. It’s time, once and for all, for us to understand what makes a fruit a fruit. According to livescience.com, a fruit is “a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves and stems.” So, technically, olives, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins are all fruits. FRUITS!

However, the above only applies if you just want to follow the botanical definition. If you want to go with the culinary definition, things that taste sweet are considered fruits, and things that taste savory, like the aforementioned botanical fruits peppers, eggplants and pumpkins, are vegetables. On the flipside, rhubarb is a botanical vegetable but a culinary fruit. Confused yet?

Here’s a little history/law lesson for you, too. When deciding whether tomatoes should be taxed as a fruit or a vegetable, the Supreme Court elected to consider them a vegetable because that is “standard” and “common.” I wonder how eggplants and olives are taxed…

Well, in the end, I decided to just say “orange fruit” for which they could only circle the orange. I was immensely thankful that the worksheet’s creator didn't decide to depict a pumpkin, too, or I would have felt even more lost and confused.

But... WHAT IS A FRUIT!?

WTF is Gluten?

Japanese people simply cannot wrap their heads around the idea that some people in America do not eat meat. That some don’t even eat FISH is even more baffling to them since they essentially equate fish to vegetables. So, imagine their complete shock when I try to explain what a vegan is. Saying that some people do not consume ANYTHING that comes from an animal astounds them. And I will never forget the way my teacher friend’s face went completely expressionless and blank with a lack of comprehension when I tried to explain gluten. Gluten free will never be something that will make sense here, so I don’t even try to tell people about that anymore.

Yes, the Japanese diet is pretty great sometimes. Sushi, sashimi, delicious fish and miso soups among other things… but sometimes, I must admit, it is a bit of a challenge. For example, Japanese people eat the skin of everything. If a fish is small enough, they will eat the ENTIRE thing, head and all. And perhaps this is normal, but they eat chicken skin as well. Not my thing.

Searching for whole wheat bread and brown rice is one that is generally in vain. I found brown rice once, and it was like searching for a needle in a haystack. They are a little behind jumping on the health food bandwagon. One of the things they do right here is drinking soup from bowls. I hate that in America we have to use our stupid spoons for broth.

This kid knows what's up