this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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I'm sorry, who exactly is out here calling mushrooms vegetables??
If it goes in soup, it's a vegetable. If it goes in Sangria, it's a fruit.
Next question please.
Chicken and beef go in soup.
Therefore, chicken and beef is vegetables.
Checkmate, vegans!
Soup is just beef tea
Assuming you like eating chicken, when is it wrong to pair chicken with vegetables? I made a vegetable-mushroom-chicken soup last week and it was delish. Whether chicken is or isn't a vegetable is an academic concern, not a culinary one.
Try putting mushrooms or chicken in the sangria however and you'll be rightfully prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Hmmm. Since breakfast cereal is demonstrably soup, that makes strawberries, Cheerios, and Reese's Puffs all vegetables. Good to know.
Oh, fun! The debate over the culinary vs botanical meaning of fruit intersecting with the debate of culinary vs topological meaning of soup.
Breakfast cereal is soup[topological] but not soup[culinary]. It is therefore not a contradiction for it to be fruit[culinary].
As some said once, a vanilla soy latte is technically a 3 bean soup
Would it be soup or broth? Soup typically has something besides liquid to it afaik
Great word, topological.
So water, salt, cheese, meat, and noodles are all vegetables?
Water is debatable, everything else why not. If a recipe is generic enough to call for "vegetables", you wouldn't be wrong to include any of those things.
So a roasted chicken is a vegetable?
Is water a fruit or a vegetable
As always, science sets us free.
If it is from a plant and it goes into fruit salad, it's fruit
I absolutely call them vegetables. It's a kitchen term and it absolutely makes sense to categorise them alongside tomatoes, beans, carrots, squash and cabbage. People get too hung up on things only belonging to exactly one category.
Seriously this whole thing is not a problem at all unless you're somehow not familiar with words having more meaning. It's a fruit (botanically) and not a fruit (culinary). I don't understand how we've gotten like 40 years of discussion out of it at this point.
I believe, it's a US thing. This is a quote from the official Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA):
Source: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/Dietary_Guidelines_for_Americans-2020-2025.pdf (page 28)
I've read elsewhere that the reason for the DGA to conflate them, is because mushrooms have comparable nutrients to vegetables. So, from a dietary and regulatory viewpoint, it makes some amount of sense. But yeah, I feel like you could have just had a category "vegetables & mushrooms".
I am American.
Take a piece of paper with 3 squares drawn on it
And hand a person a picture of an apple, tomato, pepper, cucumber, pork cutlet, and mushroom and ask them to put the pictures into the squares and then label each square
Average person will definitely label a box as vegetables and put the mushrooms in it
Well if you tell me to use only three categories and one of them will obviously be "meat", then I won't put them with apples.
One box labeled "Brown when cooked properly". Then mushrooms can go in the box with the apples and cutlets.
Box labeled "burnt to a crisp" and put everything in it.
That sign can't stop me because I can't cook (let alone properly).
Apple, tomato, peppers, and cucumbers are all fruits
Mushrooms are mushrooms
Pork is meat
But if you give the average person those it’s much more likely they will make the categories fruits, vegetables, and meat and put mushrooms in the vegetable category
Why are we starting this scenario with the arbitrary restriction of 3? Yes, if you give people any number of items and tell them there is a finite number of categories, they were will find a way to divide those items into three. That doesn't mean they wouldn't come up with a more compelling argument for their choices when told to divide into 4 groups.
At no point have our options ever only been "fruit or vegetable," but yeah I guess if you tell people those are their only choices of course they'll adhere. But like... I've never known anyone who though those were the only choices?
The point is that may people will instinctually call mushrooms a vegetable
If we take that same example and add 4 categories and then add milk as another item I am still willing to bet the average person will put mushrooms as a vegetable and make the categories fruit vegetable dairy meat even though vegetables aren’t real and you could have a category of animal products.
Now if you only quiz the biology majors you might get a different result but in the U.S. only 38% of people are college educated and the most common major is business
I have no college credits and I would never call a mushroom a vegetable
Most everyone.