Why do you have tomatoes listed in the vegetables section instead of the fruit section?

When we chose to create food categorizations for the website, which I adapted for The World's Healthiest Foods book, we needed to decide whether to do so based upon botanical guidelines or culinary guidelines. We chose the latter because we felt that it would be of better service to readers since most people are used to thinking of food in terms of how they use it rather than scientific explanations.

This is the reason we put tomatoes (as well as other "fruits" such as avocados and bell peppers) under the vegetables category. It is also why that we chose to include foods such as quinoa and buckwheat, which are seeds and not botanically "grains," in the whole grains section and why we also placed peanuts, which are botanically a legume, in the nuts category. For those foods that are categorized according to culinary rather than botanical classification, I make a note of this in that food's chapter or website write-up.

For more information on this topic, please see:

• Tomatoes

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