Avocado

Is Avocado a Fruit or a Vegetable?

First lets look at how you classify a fruit versus a vegetable?

There are two forms of classifications: botanical and culinary. But here’s a crazy twist: A single plant product can be a fruit in one category and a veggie in the other!

To be classified as a botanical fruit, the item in question must contain a seed and develop from the flower of a plant. That’s why plums, apples, and grapes are all fruits. However, any other edible part of a plant—like the leaves, stems, and roots—are vegetables. Think spinach (leaves), celery (stems), and carrots (roots).

Seems pretty clear, right? Well, when it comes to classifying fruits and vegetables in cooking, it’s all about taste. Fruits are considered to have a sweet or tart flavour, and they make great sauces or desserts. Vegetables have a savoury taste and appear either in side dishes or as the star of a main course.

Of course, there are exceptions. For example, bell peppers are technically fruits (because they contain seeds and grow from flowers), and some might taste pretty sweet when eaten raw. But in terms of cuisine, they’re considered vegetables, whether stuffed with rice and beef or as the perfect crunchy addition to a salad or stir-fry.

So is an Avocado a Fruit or a Vegetable?

Avocados develop from a flower, so from a botanical perspective, they are considered fruits. The small greenish flowers grow on trees in their native Mexico and other warm climates. However, despite fitting all the requirements for a fruit, avocados are more often treated as vegetables in terms of how we eat them. The USDA agrees, classifying avocado as a vegetable due to its nutritional content and culinary use.

With its rich, nutty flavour, an avocado isn’t as sweet as other fruits, but its flexibility in all sorts of dishes makes it a pretty unusual vegetable too. After all, even though it’s a fruit, you wouldn’t put it in a fruit salad alongside melons and oranges. And even thought it’s a vegetable, it’s not a snack like a carrot stick, and it’s delicious on toast at brunch. No wonder we find it hard to classify avocados into just one category.

So there you have it: An avocado is a fruit and a vegetable! Tomatoes are similar.

In Indonesia for instance Avocados are often served as dessert as its seem as a fruit as it grows on a tree!