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Vegetables

The term vegetables can have three distinct meanings when applied to plants. The first as in "animal, vegetable, or mineral" refers to the entire kingdom of green plants: algae, mosses, ferns, and flowering plants, and maybe including nongreen fungi and bacteria. The botanical sense of vegetables refers to all plant parts such as roots, stems, and leaves excluding the reproductive structures of flowers, fruits, and seeds, so that there is a vegetative phase of plant growth and a reproductive phase that is quite distinct. The third usage and the one most commonly understood refers to plant structures that are predominately water, edible without much woody fiber (cellulose), easily eaten raw, and low in sugar. This "kitchen sense" of the word vegetable as in "eat your vegetables" refers to botanical vegetables such as roots (e.g., radishes, parsnips, and carrots), underground stems or tubers (e.g., potatoes), young stems (e.g., asparagus and bamboo shoots), short stems with surrounding fleshy leaves (e.g., onions), leaf stalks (e.g., celery and rhubarb), leaves (e.g., lettuce and parsley), buds (e.g., cabbage and palm hearts), and extends into reproductive structures such as unopened flowers (e.g., broccoli and artichokes), fruit (e.g., tomatoes, okra, bell peppers, green beans, eggplants, and cucumbers), and seeds (e.g., green peas). "Kitchen-sense" vegetables are generally excellent sources of vitamins A and C, as well as minerals, while being low in overall calories. Mushrooms are also considered vegetables in this sense. They are the reproductive structure of fungi.

Vegetables are consistently high in water and eaten when young and immature before much plant fiber has developed. Many vegetables are biennials, which grow the first year and accumulate materials in the root or other vegetative part to use in flowering the second year. Examples are carrots, beets, parsnips, and rutabaga, which are harvested the first year before the root turns woody. Many fruits are eaten immature before the enclosed seeds develop fully, such as zucchini, crookneck squash, sweet corn, snow pea, and chayote. Some vegetables are 91 to 95 percent water (cabbage, tomato, spinach), others are 85 to 95 percent water (carrots, artichoke, brussels sprouts) and some are 70 to 80 percent water (sweet corn, peas, sweet potato, parsnips, potato). The later are high in starch. The high water content explains why most vegetables are low in calories.

The most-consumed vegetable across cultures is the tomato, much of it being processed for sauces and other tomato-based products. Originally from Mexico, this fruit, which is used as a vegetable, has been adopted by almost every cooking style. The onion and its various pungent lily relatives are the vegetables with the highest sugar content and are found in cooking (which brings out the sugar) worldwide. The vegetable with the most forms from a single species, Brassica oleraceo, are the Mediterranean cabbage relatives: kale, collards, broccoli, and cauliflower known from Greek and Roman times, headed cabbage from the Middle Ages to brussels sprouts and kholrabi from the time of the Renaissance. The potato is the world's number-one vegetable by tonnage harvested but is seldom eaten raw and is more often classified as a starchy tuber.