Is Corn A Vegetable? As a fruit, vegetable and cereal, corn is one of the most important components of the diet of many people around the world and a source of protein and fiber.
The answer is more technical than you might think, and to fully understand the answer, you need a little basic research in corn biology. I know that this debate has been going on for centuries, with many different interpretations of its importance, but I will answer this classic debate as thoroughly as possible for eternity. It should not be mixed in fruit salad or with other vegetables, fruits, vegetables or cereals.
Consists of several ears
A single corn stalk consists of several ears, which form the female part of the plant, and has a tassel at the top, which is, as you can guess, the male part. The tassels produce pollen (sperm) for all plants in the world, but they do not produce pollen or sperm for any plant in the world.
Before the ears even begin to look for what to eat, they are hard cylinders covered with hundreds of unfertilized eggs. In these bubbles grows a single silk that rises to the top of the shell and hopes to catch a little pollen with its small sticky hairs. If this is the case, the silk forms a pollen tube that allows the male genes to travel to ovulation, and from this single nucleus the fertilised eggs grow.
You just happen to win a whole ear of corn, so it’s important to be aware of what happens once you win it.
Fruit and vegetables differ depending on which part of the plant you eat, and when we eat the part that comes from the ovary or other reproductive tissue, we call it fruit, “explains Dr. John F. Kowalski, professor of plant biology at the University of California, Davis.
This means that it does not have a substantial fleshy layer to help it dry well, but a thick, dense layer of fibres.
So corn is both a grain and a fruit, like wheat, millet and oats, but is it a vegetable? This brings us to Karyopsis, perhaps better known by its common name of cereals, which is the kind of fruit that is begged by cereals.
Botanically and scientifically, the answer to whether corn is a vegetable or not, and in particular whether it is a fruit or a cereal, is a question of whether it is a vegetable or not.
An arbitrary term
In general parlance, “vegetable” is essentially an arbitrary term, and frankly, much of it is probably wrong. I think about what comes to mind when I take a picture of a vegetable, but here’s the thing: in general, I’m pretty sure that’s probably true of lettuce, carrots, potatoes, etc.
Unfortunately, this is not a big rule of thumb, so I wanted to tackle it technically. I have no problem with fruit, which for most of us is what we eat directly. You can take a peach or an apple, but you have to have a product that is not sweet or super juicy, and it has to be cooked.
I would probably roast a pumpkin or blanch peas, but I think you should stick to the definition that most people use. A lot of people throw peppers into this category, and I’m sure a lot of people would do that because they’re really fruits. If they are really fruits, you can eat them just as you would eat any other kind of food. Fruit is a whole range of different things, from nuts and seeds to fruits and vegetables.
Not technically become a vegetable yet
For his part, Pritts acknowledges that corn is eaten like any other vegetable, but notes that it has not technically become a vegetable yet. That is a decent argument, and it is up to you to decide which definition you want to stick to. If people think that a pumpkin is “a vegetable,” then it is not really a vegetable. The same could be said for corn, or we could leave it at that and decide for ourselves what definition of “vegetables” we want to stick to.
