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Is a potato a vegetable?

PotomacBob 🚫

In Jay Cantrell's Unforgettable Weeks, Chapter 2, the main character, Andy Drayton, says, "I know potatoes aren't a vegetable but I still consider them one."
I know what a character in a story says should not be taken as gospel, but I agree with the second part of his declaration "... I still consider them one."
Which brings up my question. If potatoes aren't a vegetable, what are they? They aren't meat. They aren't a fruit. They aren't a grain. They aren't dairy or eggs. I always considered them to be a starchy vegetable - but still a vegetable.

Replies: Switch Blayde awnlee jawking Dominions Son Dominions Son i_like2_sail2 StarFleet Carl joyR qqqq markselias11 Switch Blayde Ernest Bywater Quasirandom Remus2 qqqq Torsian

Switch Blayde 🚫

@PotomacBob

Potatoes are a vegetable.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@PotomacBob

I always considered them to be a starchy vegetable - but still a vegetable.

Technically potatoes are a vegetable but your point about starch is spot on - the fact that they're so full of carbs means that dieticians don't consider them to be one of your 3/5/7/9/11/13/15 portions a day of fruit and veg.

That's very questionable - if you have a jacket potato not cooked in oil, the skin is a good source of roughage and the flesh is rich in Vitamin C and Potassium. On the other hand, if you have McDonald's fries ...

AJ

Dominions Son 🚫

@PotomacBob

Depends, are you using the geo-science taxonomy definition or the nutritional definition?

A potato is neither an animal nor a mineral, therefore, it is a vegetable.

But seriously. They are a tuber, the root of the plant, and from a nutritional perspective they get lumped in with the vegetables.

Note: the 4 food groups have a lot of plant based materials in the wrong groups from a strictly biological basis. Most of the out of place items are considered vegetables.

Sweat Corn is considered a vegetable, but biologically, it's a grain. Biologically, tomatoes are fruit.

Dominions Son 🚫

@PotomacBob

i_like2_sail2 🚫

@PotomacBob

Mineral....lol

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@PotomacBob

Biologically, a potato is a tuber, and is actually part of the nightshade family (as is the tomato, eggplant, and peppers).

Nutritionally, the potato is classified as a starch.

From a botanical perspective, there are no such things as vegetables. The tomato, green bean, pepper, cucumber, etc., are fruits because they contain the seeds. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1893 that common classification of food items as a vegetable versus scientific classification as a fruit as part of the law applies.

Replies: helmut_meukel

helmut_meukel 🚫
Updated:

@StarFleet Carl

The tomato, green bean, pepper, cucumber, etc., are fruits because they contain the seeds.

OTOH, rhubarb is no fruit (no seeds).

HM.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@helmut_meukel

OTOH, rhubarb is no fruit (no seeds).

Rhubarb is poison.

Replies: Tw0Cr0ws StarFleet Carl

Tw0Cr0ws 🚫

@Dominions Son

Rhubarb is poison.

Only every part except the stalk.

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Dominions Son

Rhubarb is poison.

Rhubarb leaves are poisonous. Rhubarb stalks are delicious. Strawberry rhubarb pie is my favorite.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

Rhubarb leaves are poisonous. Rhubarb stalks are delicious.

In WWII, the British Govt encouraged people to eat rhubarb leaves. Aside from the high levels of oxalates, they're actually quite nutritious.

Rhubarb stalks should be treated with caution by people with kidney stone problems, but for most people they're fine.

AJ

qqqq 🚫

while we're on this why not do yams and sweet bpotatoes too...

karactr 🚫

And if we are talking tubers, why are peanuts and onions so neglected? Oh, not tubers...sorry.

qqqq 🚫

if you are a rhubarb fan you'l love goose berries too...

Replies: StarFleet Carl

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@qqqq

if you are a rhubarb fan you'l love goose berries too...

Gooseberry pie is good, too.

Gooseberry leaves are a great salad for vegans you don't like. (They contain HCN - Hydrogen Cyanide, like many plants which contain poisonous leaves.)

Darian Wolfe 🚫

As momma would have said "Just eat your damn potatoes and hush." Lol. Sorry, couldn't resist.

joyR 🚫

@PotomacBob

If potatoes aren't a vegetable, what are they?

It is both insulting and incorrect to call a potato a vegetable just because it isn't sentient. The correct expression one should use is "légume".

As an aside it is incorrect to refer to them as tubers, Even Øystein Baadsvik couldn't play a potato.

:)

Replies: karactr

karactr 🚫
Updated:

@joyR

The correct expression one should use is "légume".

Sorry to disagree, but a potatoe is most definitely NOT a legume. Quit giving the largest family of plants on the planet honors they don't deserve. Potatoes are not peas. Closer to the root of a tomatoe, really.

Replies: joyR helmut_meukel helmut_meukel

joyR 🚫

@karactr

Sorry to disagree, but a potatoe is most definitely NOT a legume.

I concur, you are absolutely correct.

However, I wrote "légume" which is french and has a different meaning.

helmut_meukel 🚫

@karactr

a potatoe is most definitely NOT a legume

Sorry, but it is, the French definitely regard pommes de terre as légume. Their language, their definition.

HM.

Replies: John Demille

John Demille 🚫

@helmut_meukel

The French 'Légume' means vegetable. It's not the same as legume in English.

Potatoes are tubers and usually classified with the vegetables in most places that I've been.

Replies: helmut_meukel

helmut_meukel 🚫

@John Demille

The French 'Légume' means vegetable. It's not the same as legume in English.

I know, but JoyR had written légume and karactr cited her post ommitting the accent (accidentally I assumed) so I answered using the originally written légume.

BTW, the german word for vegetable is "Gemüse" but most Germans don't count potatoes as "Gemüse". "Gemüse" is often used only for vegetables served cooked, those used uncooked for salads are named "Salate" or "Salatgemüse".

HM.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@helmut_meukel

BTW, the german word for vegetable is "Gemüse" but most Germans don't count potatoes as "Gemüse". "Gemüse" is often used only for vegetables served cooked

Germans eat potatoes raw? Why don't they just make 'vodka' from them, like their Polish neighbours?

AJ

Replies: helmut_meukel

helmut_meukel 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Germans eat potatoes raw?

No.
Most Germans classify potatoes (cooked or fried) as "Sättigungsbeilage" like noodles or rice, to eat with a small amount of meat.

HM.

helmut_meukel 🚫

@karactr

Potatoes are not peas.

True, but peas, like beans and lentils, are fruits.

HM.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@helmut_meukel

peas, like beans and lentils, are fruits.

Mangetout is technically a fruit, but the little round things inside the pods aren't - they're the seeds within the fruit (pod).

AJ

Replies: joyR

joyR 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Gluttons are big fans of the Mangetout diet.

:)

Replies: madnige

madnige 🚫

@joyR

Here, Mr. Creosote, have this wafer-thin mint...

Replies: Mushroom

Mushroom 🚫
Updated:

@madnige

Here, Mr. Creosote, have this wafer-thin mint...

*snort* You win $5 for obscure movie reference.

And no, I did not even have to look up the video. The Meaning of Life is one of my favorite movies, and back in the day I even owned the movie soundtrack.

I think Eric should update "The Galaxy Song" with things we now know today. Such as our system orbiting the galaxy at 1 million miles a day, instead of what we now know as 12 million miles a day.

karactr 🚫

I than consider that whole tangent an intentional attempt to obsficate the topic and be intentionally misleading by switching languages to one unfamiliar.

Quite like reading Umberto Eco.

qqqq 🚫

@PotomacBob

??????

markselias11 🚫

@PotomacBob

On behalf of all fat people (of which I am one) I think I can speak for all of us when I say potatoes are their own food group. It's science ... sort of!

Replies: Mushroom

Mushroom 🚫

@markselias11

I think I can speak for all of us when I say potatoes are their own food group.

Coming from Idaho, I agree with that. In general, dinner for us was a big plate of potatoes, and then anything else that mom wanted to add to it. It shocked my wife when she finally realized I was serious when I insisted 1-1.5 pounds of mashed potatoes per person is what I expected. Then seeing me cook entire 5 pound bags and boiling them (skin and all) then putting 1 (to me) person portions in the freezer completely blew her mind.

Switch Blayde 🚫
Updated:

@PotomacBob

When I was a kid, my doctor asked me what vegetables I ate. My answer was: "Potatos and spaghetti."

To me, back then, a vegetable was whatever was on the plate next to the meat.

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@PotomacBob

Potatoes have to be vegetables because every couch potato I know is clearly a vegetable.

Quasirandom 🚫

@PotomacBob

As noted above, vegetable has different definitions in different linguistic domains. In some technical domains, a potato is not a vegetable. In other domains, it is.

Arguing over this is *cough* fruitless.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Quasirandom

Arguing over this is *cough* fruitless.

But it is not without musical instruments.

Replies: Quasirandom

Quasirandom 🚫

@Dominions Son

True, that. All too true.

Remus2 🚫

@PotomacBob

From Miriam Webster:

: a usually herbaceous plant (such as the cabbage, bean, or potato) grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal also : such an edible part

So yes, it's a vegetable by definition.

Replies: Argon

Argon 🚫

@Remus2

From Miriam Webster:

Who is that Miriam Webster? She cute?

Replies: Dominions Son richardshagrin

Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@Argon

Who is that Miriam Webster?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merriam-Webster

Merriam-Webster, Inc., is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries.

In 1828, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to An American Dictionary of the English Language from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source.

In 1964, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., acquired Merriam-Webster, Inc., as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name in 1982.[1][2]

richardshagrin 🚫

@Argon

Miriam Webster

"Biography
Miriam Webster
Band Members: Miriam Webster

Miriam Webster is an Australian gospel singer-songwriter. Her career began at the age of 15, when she won the interstate music awards. She has since toured Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and released several albums, of which the first is Never Alone. She has been serving with the Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia since 1996 and featuring on numerous Hillsong Music praise-and-worship albums since 1997."

Based on the photo online she qualifies as "cute".

qqqq 🚫

@PotomacBob

Torsian 🚫

@PotomacBob

Based on the argument this spawned I have new respect for that line.

Personally everything plant based I eat is a vegetable until I need to figure out its impact on my diet, which causes a headache.

Dominions Son 🚫

Snort. You win $5 for obscure movie reference.

That comes from the OP who says he cot it from a story here on SOL. I can't find anything in a Google search that would confirm this as a movie reference.

Replies: Mushroom

Mushroom 🚫

@Dominions Son

That comes from the OP who says he cot it from a story here on SOL. I can't find anything in a Google search that would confirm this as a movie reference.

Oh, it is. They even linked the segment in the video from the movie.

Monty Python's Meaning of Life, about half way through. A disgusting fat pig (Terry Jones in a fat suit) who goes into a fancy French restaurant, and John Cleese as the waiter. He almost immediately vomits on the floor, then onto the back of the maid that comes to clean it up.

Maître d': "Ah, good afternoon, sir; and how are we today?"
Mr. Creosote: "Better."
Maître d': "Better?"
Mr. Creosote: "Better get a bucket, I'm gonna throw up."

Then what follows is like a scene from an ancient Roman orgy, complete with vomitorium. He eats at least one of everything on the menu, multiple crates of beer, then announces he is stuffed and can not eat another bite.

Cleese then encourages him to eat a single "wafer-thin mint", and this is too much. Once he eats it, his stomach literally explodes, covering everybody in the restaurant with half digested food and entrails.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Creosote

I admit, I have long loved that particular segment, and is a perfect example of the surrealistic side of the Python humor. And immediately follows the "Not the Noel Coward Song".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxRnenQYG7I

Replies: madnige Dominions Son

madnige 🚫
Updated:

@Mushroom

That's the same link I posted - I must have been too subtle...

ETA: OK, mine was the Google redirect link to the video, gets to the same place - I thought I'd copied it from the browser address bar, what I think happened is the clipboard didn't get copied when I was moving from the computer I watched the video on (the one I'm sat at now) to the one with the forum open on it, which still had the Google search result in the clipboard from where I copied it to past into this one.

Dominions Son 🚫

@Mushroom

Oh, it is. They even linked the segment in the video from the movie.

But what you quoted the first time around and what I was basking my comment on did not come from the comment with the link to the Mr Creosote clip, it came from the OP

It was this line, "I know potatoes aren't a vegetable but I still consider them one." which isn't in the Mr Creosote clip.

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Is a potato a vegetable?

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