Exotic vegetable and starch

Exotic vegetable and starch

Exotic vegetable and starch

Introduction

Biologically speaking, the term vegetable refers to the edible part of a nonwoody plant cultivated particularly for that edible part. Many herbaceous plants are related as family clusters, such as nightshades, allium, cucurbits, and brassica. Meanwhile, fruits are the ripened, swollen ovary of a flower after the ovules inside has been fertilized. Fruits contain the seeds of any flowering plants and can be divided into three main subclasses: those with seeds in the flesh, such as pears, citrus, melons, and berries; those containing pits (drupes), such as cherries, peaches, and plums; and dry fruits (dry drupes), such as certain nuts, beans, and peas (Ballister, 2007).

Discussion and Analysis

On closer botanical inspection, however, this technical distinction blurs. Because a vegetable is by definition the edible part of any herbaceous plant (be it the root of the carrot plant, the floret of the broccoli plant, the seed of the bean, the bulb of the garlic, or the leaf of the spinach), and fruits are the seed-containing part of any flowering plant, the two are not mutually exclusive. Tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and cucumbers fit both vegetable and fruit classifications, and somewhat counterintuitively, olives, sugar peapods, avocados, coffee, and almonds would all technically count as fruits. Fruit serves as a more botanically specific term, whereas vegetable remains more a grocer or chef classification (though this fruit definition begs the question of the oxymoron of seedless fruit).

Despite the arbitrary difference and contested definitions of vegetables and fruits, the categories remain relatively firm in mainstream, culinary, public health, and horticultural parlance. Vegetables usually contain complex carbohydrates, whereas fruits offer mostly simple carbohydrates with more readily accessible sugars (fructose). In many traditional cuisines, different fruits and vegetables have respective properties, often associated with heating or cooling attributes, and their ...