Haven’t we all played guessing games during our childhood when we had to come up with all the items of a said category and never gave it a second thought clubbing tomato with onions and potatoes? But while onions and potatoes are vegetables, our blushing tomatoes are part of #TeamFruits. This is because, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary explains, fruits contain seeds that help the plant in its reproduction. On the other hand, potatoes and onions ARE the plants or edible parts of it, making them vegetables.
But why do we generalize a tomato as a vegetable? The answer lies in understanding why we don’t think of a tomato as a fruit. This is because we tend to create category prototypes. A category is a division of “entities in the world” based on the entity’s characteristics. As we are exposed to more objects of a category, we average out its features to create a typical or idealized member of a category, a prototype. For example, imagine having fruits, the more you have them, the more you realize that fruits are sweet, pulpy, and sticky. So you create a prototype of fruit from these characteristics. And hence from this prototype, you get the concept, the psychological or mental idea that fruits are generally sweet, pulpy, and sticky.
Once that concept is formed, would you rather choose a soft pulpy, sweet-scented mango or a hard rather odorless tangy tomato to be a fruit? Eleanor Rosch, who has done considerable research on this topic, also elucidates that the boundaries are ill-defined in natural categories, resulting in perceiving some members of the category as a central or better representative of the category. Therefore, you would choose a mango as a fruit because it shares more features and family resemblance with other members of its category than heartbroken tomatoes.
Maybe you will fare better in identifying and matching this next member with its correct category:
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Surprised? Did you know the Government of India made the same miscategorization by legally defining bamboo as a tree under the Indian Forest Act, 1927? The Indian Forest (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, was enacted to change the status of bamboo from a tree to grass, giving way to a source of income for the farmers by the cultivation of bamboo, which before this amendment was illegal.
References:
Abadi, Mark. “14 Vegetables That Are Actually Fruits.” Business Insider, 18 June 2018, www.businessinsider.in/science/14-vegetables-that-are-actually fruits/articleshow/64640693.cms.
Gluck, M. A., Mercado, E., & Myers, C. E. (2007). Learning and memory: From brain to behavior. Macmillan Higher Education.
“Centre Promulgates Indian Forest (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017 to Encourage Bamboo Cultivation in Non-Forest Areas.” Press Information Bureau, 23 Nov. 2017, pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=173782#:~:text=Bamboo%2C%20though%2C%20taxonomically%20a%20grass,the%20Indian%20Forest%20Act%2C%201927.&text=The%20measure%20will%20go%20a,North%2DEast%20and%20Central%20India.
