Is pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?

pumpkin fruit or vegetable

In popular culture we know fruits and vegetables more or less correctly. We say more or less correct, because there are some mistakes from the botanical point of view. An example of them is the pumpkin. Many people confuse whether the pumpkin is fruit or vegetable, like a few others.

For this reason, we are going to dedicate this article to tell you whether the pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable and some more confusion.

Differences between fruit and vegetables

Distinguishing fruits and vegetables is not as easy as it seems. There are several types of vegetables that taste like vegetables but are actually fruits. Tomatoes are one of them. There are also other garnishes such as pumpkin, cucumber or eggplant.

This may seem strange, but when you eat cucumber tomato salad, you are technically eating a fruit salad. When making ratatouille, more fruits are used than vegetables. To know if it is a fruit, it is useful to ask yourself these questions: Is it of plant origin, does it contain seeds and is it edible? If a food meets these criteria, it is fruit. So a tomato or pumpkin is closer to watermelon and kiwi than an onion or celery.

Humans have been using the edible parts of countless plants for centuries. Whether they are leaves (for spinach, beetroot, chicory...); stems (asparagus, leeks, celery…); inflorescences (artichokes, broccoli…); bulbs (onions, garlic...); roots (carrots, radishes…), and of course fruit. Here are some common examples of foods that, although in our imagination they have nothing to do with the world of fruits, technically they are. With this, we will answer the question of whether pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable.

Pumpkin fruit or vegetable?

pumpkin fruit or vegetable

The pumpkin belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family and is a fruit rich in beta-carotene and vitamin C. In addition, it provides dietary fiber, very beneficial for health. This food is presented all year (winter and summer) in soup, cream, stew or puree. Its sweet taste is loved by young children and opens up many culinary possibilities for lovers of sweet and sour dishes.

Pumpkin is technically a fruit and, like the avocado, it works well in both the sweet and salty worlds. Precisely with it we can prepare, for example, delicious creams or spectacular decorations for cakes that are irresistible for those who do not have a sweet tooth (without forgetting, of course, what it brings us when Halloween arrives, not only as a decorative element) but also as a culinary element. to prepare children's recipes.

other confusions

Tomatoes

tomatoes

Today, We associate this food of Aztec origin with the plant world, not with the world of fruits. At the end of that century, the supreme court of the North American nation approved a law that taxed all imported vegetables. Companies that import tomatoes claim that tomatoes are a fruit, and science backs it up. However, the US government stipulates that it is used more often in cooking as a vegetable than a fruit and you must pay taxes. In any case, we label it, we label it, and there is no doubt about the popularity of this absolutely everyday food, essential in the shopping baskets of millions of homes around the world.

Red, yellow, green, more or less spicy, more or less large... whatever type they are, whatever variety they are, all peppers belong to the fruit category. Originally from America, this food offers us a great variety in the kitchen – baked, stuffed, baked… And, on a nutritional level, it is just as interesting. In addition to the most famous To its properties in this field, a curiosity is added that not everyone knows, and that is that the contribution of vitamin C provided by peppers is very high, surpassing even other famous foods such as vitamin "shots", such as oranges.

Eggplant

We are talking about the "close relative" of the tomato and pepper: the eggplant. And they all belong to the Solanaceae family (like the potato, by the way, although it is not a fruit but a tuber). Its high water content and low caloric intake make eggplant a perfect food in a slimming diet, depending on how we cook it. Simply grilled, with a little oil, salt and a pinch of black pepper, it is delicious. However, the games that bring us in the kitchen are almost unlimited.

Avocados

Breakfast toasts, salads, appetizers such as spicy guacamole, smoothies, pastry recipes... avocado works equally well in both the sweet and savory arena: You just have to take a look at social networks to see its versatility. Fruits have become one of the popular few in recent years. Such is the "passion for avocado" that there are even single-theme restaurants where avocado is the main ingredient on the menu.

Zucchini

courgettes

Like squash and cucumbers, which we'll talk about later, zucchini belongs to the Cucurbit family. Another obvious example of a food that, although we normally cook it as a vegetable, is actually a fruit if we look at it strictly from a botanical point of view. The culinary possibilities are also nearly endless. In addition, they are delicious fillings, in the form of creams and purees, in the form of paste, as a garnish for meat or fish dishes… They are undoubtedly an important part of our shopping cart.

Cucumbers

When we think about the stomach functions of cucumbers, gazpacho is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Of course, this fruit (more suitable for summer due to its powerful cooling properties) also It goes very well in salads, appetizers, etc. In addition, it is one of the foods with the fewest calories of all that we can find on the market (per 100 grams it contains only 12 calories).

Green beans

Red beans are the fruit of legumes. In the case of chickpeas, lentils, peanuts... the outer pods are discarded, in the case of beans it is the pods that are really edible and we usually use them in the kitchen instead of the fruit: sautéed green beans, in salads, in the form of cream, as an ingredient in garnishes such as meat or fish dishes.

I hope that with this information you can learn more about whether pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable and learn more about the most common confusion about it.


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