Hey there! I’m Jay, and I want to tell you about my little mango tree. It’s small now, but one day it will grow big and strong. Mangoes are my favorite fruit! Today, we’re going to help someone named Marianne learn more about fruits and vegetables. Let’s dive in!
Marianne asked a great question: Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Think about all the fruits and vegetables you’ve tried. They come in many shapes, colors, and flavors. We usually put them into two big groups: fruits and vegetables.
Can you think of some fruits? Maybe apples or mangoes, like the ones I love. And what about vegetables? Perhaps broccoli or spinach come to mind. But where do tomatoes fit in? To figure this out, we need to understand what makes fruits and vegetables different.
Let’s think about it. You might say fruits are sweet and juicy, while vegetables are not as sweet. In the grocery store, fruits and vegetables are often grouped by taste. But is that the only way to tell them apart?
Here’s another way to think about it: how they grow! All fruits and vegetables come from plants. My mango tree, for example, will grow mangoes someday. But first, it needs to make flowers. When I saw my neighbor’s mango tree, it had flowers that turned into mangoes. Most fruits start as flowers!
When a plant has flowers, parts of the flower can change and ripen into fruits. So, if a fruit comes from a flower, what about vegetables? Some vegetables come from other parts of the plant, like spinach leaves or carrot roots.
To know if a tomato is a fruit, we need to see how it grows. Watch closely: a tomato plant has yellow flowers that change into tomatoes. Just like mangoes, apples, and watermelons, tomatoes start as flowers. That means tomatoes are fruits!
Here’s something else cool about fruits: they usually have seeds. Look inside a tomato, and you’ll find seeds. This is true for other fruits too, like peppers, avocados, and pumpkins. They all started as flowers and have seeds inside.
But wait! Tomatoes are often in the vegetable section at the store. So, are they fruits or vegetables? The answer is both! When we talk about how plants grow, tomatoes are fruits. But when we talk about food and taste, they’re often called vegetables.
Now you know that fruits come from flowers and usually have seeds. Next time you eat a vegetable, look for seeds. You might find another veggie that’s also a fruit! If it doesn’t have seeds, think about what part of the plant it might be—a leaf, a root, or something else.
Thanks for joining me and Marianne on this fun adventure! Stay curious, and keep exploring the amazing world of plants. See you next time!
Fruit and Vegetable Hunt: Go on a fruit and vegetable hunt in your kitchen or garden. With the help of an adult, find different fruits and vegetables. Look closely at each one and try to figure out if it has seeds inside. If it does, it’s likely a fruit! Make a list of the fruits and vegetables you find and draw a picture of each one. Can you find any surprises, like a cucumber or a bell pepper, that are fruits because they have seeds?
Plant a Seed: Plant a seed from a fruit you eat, like an apple or a tomato, in a small pot with soil. Water it regularly and place it in a sunny spot. Watch it grow over time. Keep a journal to draw and write about what you see each week. How does the plant change? Can you spot any flowers forming? This will help you understand how fruits grow from flowers.
Story Time with Plants: Create a short story about a fruit or vegetable of your choice. Imagine it as a character going on an adventure. What kind of plant does it come from? Does it have seeds? Where does it grow? Share your story with your family or friends and see if they can guess if your character is a fruit or a vegetable based on the clues in your story.
Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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Hey, it’s Jay, and this is my mango tree. It’s still small, but someday it’s going to grow. My absolute favorite fruit is mangoes. Someone named Marianne is curious about fruits and vegetables. Let’s give Marianne a call now.
Hi, Marianne! Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? That’s a great question! Think for a moment about all the fruits and vegetables you’ve tried. There are so many kinds, and they can look and taste really different. But all that variety often gets put into two big groups: fruits and vegetables.
I’m guessing you can already think of examples for the fruit group, like maybe apples or my favorite, mangoes. You probably have ideas for the vegetable group too, like broccoli or spinach. And maybe you already know which group you’d put tomatoes in. But why is that? We say “fruit” and “vegetable” a lot, but what exactly do those words mean? If we want to figure out which one a tomato is, it would be helpful to know what makes fruits and vegetables different.
What do you think? What makes something a fruit and what makes something a vegetable? Now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss.
Okay, are you ready? I’m not sure how you answered, but maybe you thought about how fruits and vegetables taste. You may have said that most fruits taste sweeter and juicier, while vegetables are tasty too, but usually not as sweet and juicy. At the grocery store, fruits and vegetables do seem to be grouped by how they taste and how people use them as food. Sweeter fruits are over here, and not-so-sweet vegetables are over there. So, a tomato is a vegetable, right?
Well, hold on a minute! Let’s say that instead of how they taste, you want to know how fruits and vegetables grow. Something these fruits and vegetables have in common is that they all come from plants—plants like my mango tree. Except mine still doesn’t grow any mangoes. My neighbors, though, grow lots! I wanted to know if there was something different about their mango tree. That’s when I noticed their tree had all these little flowers. My mango tree doesn’t make flowers yet. Could that have something to do with it?
I kept checking, and over time, those flowers started to change. See how the center is getting bigger and rounder? Well, they got bigger and rounder and riper until I realized, hey, those are mangoes! So, mangoes start out as flowers. In fact, most plants with flowers do something similar. When conditions are right, parts inside the flowers change and ripen to make fruits.
There’s a lot more to the science, but basically, when you’re talking about how plants grow, a fruit means something that forms from a specific part of a flower. So if fruits come from flowers, what about vegetables? Well, some things we call vegetables come from other parts of plants. Like spinach, which are the leaves of this plant, and carrots, which are this plant’s extra plump roots.
To know what a tomato is, we need to know if it comes from a flower like a fruit or if it comes from some other part of a plant like a vegetable. See if you can spot how tomatoes grow in this sped-up video. This plant’s yellow flowers are starting to change. Look familiar? Yep, that’s a tomato! So tomatoes start out as flowers just like mangoes, apples, and watermelons. And if it started as a flower, that means a tomato is a fruit.
If that seems unbelievable, let me show you something else tomatoes have in common with many other fruits. Check it out—they have seeds! When a flower changes into a fruit, it’s usually making seeds as well, and those seeds become part of the fruit. The seeds inside a tomato show that it’s a fruit. And notice the seeds in this pepper, this avocado, and this pumpkin? That means they also started as flowers and ripened into fruits. These are fruits too!
But wait, all of these are usually in the not-so-sweet vegetable part of the grocery store. So what are they? Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? I’d say it’s both! A tomato is a fruit and a vegetable. What you call it really depends on what information you want to share. When you’re talking about how plants grow, “fruit” is a helpful word that tells us what part of a plant something comes from. “Fruit” tells us tomatoes form from a specific part of a flower, but “fruit” doesn’t tell us how tomatoes taste. If you’re talking about food, then it’s helpful to call tomatoes a vegetable. I mean, you could try to order fruit leaf and root soup, but it’s probably clearer to say vegetable soup instead.
So in summary, when you’re talking about how plants grow, tomatoes are a fruit. But if you’re talking about flavors and food, it makes sense to call them vegetables. Now that you know fruits come from flowers and usually contain seeds, keep an eye out for seeds in other vegetables. If you spot some, you’ve probably found another veggie that’s also a fruit. And if it doesn’t have seeds, see if you can figure out what other part of a plant it comes from—a leaf, a root, or maybe something else.
That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Marianne, for asking it! Now for the next episode, we reached into our question jar and picked out three questions sent in to us that we’re thinking about answering next. When this video is done playing, you’ll get to vote on one. You can choose from: Why do people get earaches? Who invented the doorbell? Or are dolphins really one of the smartest animals in the world?
So submit your vote when the video is over. We want to hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious, and see you next week!
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This version removes any informal language and clarifies the content while maintaining the original message.
