Halloween is one of the most popular holidays in America, but it’s not without its controversies.
Local CSU Extension Agent Robin Young has been keeping us informed about agricultural facts for a number of years now, in a regular column in the Pagosa Springs SUN newspaper. I believe her first column was in July 2017, and she has not yet run out of agrarian issues to discuss.
Typically, the CSU Extension articles are non-controversial. But sometimes, a public squabble is unavoidable.
Last week, she addressed one of the quarrels that has had our Congressional Republicans and Democrats at each other’s throats, when they’re not busy fighting about shutting down the government.
The question:
Is a pumpkin a fruit, or a vegetable?
According to Ms. Young, a pumpkin is a fruit. But I fear Ms. Young is approaching this controversy from the wrong angle. She is proposing that a fruit is anything that begins its development as a flower, while a vegetable is something else, typically needing a cheese sauce to make it palatable.
To support her argument, she offers up the opinion of a so-called ‘scientist’.
According to expert Joe Masabni, Ph.D., Texas A&M Agri Life Extension Service vegetable specialist in Dallas, scientifically speaking, a pumpkin is a fruit simply because anything that starts from a flower is botanically a fruit.
This would, of course, mean that all squashes are fruits. Including zucchini, and acorn squash. Also, cucumbers. And tomatoes. And peas. And beans. And eggplant.
You could even argue, based on this definition, that broccoli and cauliflower should be classed as ‘fruits’ because they are, after all, flowers that haven’t been allowed to blossom.
Pardon me, but I have to laugh. Ha ha ha! No mother in America has ever said, to a child making a face at some overcooked zucchini: “Louis, stop making that face, and eat your fruit.”
The correct motherly response, in all cases, has been: “Louis, eat your vegetables, or no dessert.”
Every mother, and every child, knows a vegetable when they see one. Ditto, a fruit.
Fruits are delightfully sweet and succulent, and are kept in the ‘fruit bowl’ in the kitchen, typically next to the coffeemaker or the toaster. In the fruit bowl, you will find apples, oranges, pears, plums, bananas, peaches — in season, of course. A couple of kiwifruit, if you’re lucky.
No mother has ever put a pumpkin in the ‘fruit bowl’. For one thing, it wouldn’t fit. Also, it would be likely to smash all the actual fruit.
But mostly, because it’s a vegetable.
An ordinary person probably wouldn’t pay much attention to this controversy, except maybe around Halloween, and even then, only if they were an agricultural scientist or congressional representative.
But I’m not an ordinary person, as some Daily Post readers are probably aware. I will gladly put my reputation on the line, to champion the rights of vegetables to identify as ‘vegetables’.
Vegetables too often get the short end of the stick, in the contest between fruits and vegetables.
Except maybe potatoes. Potatoes are right up there with fruit, in terms of popularity. But no one would ever deny that a potato is a vegetable… or put potatoes in the fruit bowl.
I look forward to the day when pumpkins get the same level of respect afforded to potatoes.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.