Vegetables are a very important part of our diet. We can consume them as a salad, boiled, fried, steamed, or cooked in some other way. They provide us with many vitamins and minerals and help us stay healthy and vital. What is your favorite vegetable? What vegetables do you know? Carrots, potatoes, spinach, cabbage, and many more can come to the list. What about tomatoes and cucumbers? Are they vegetables as well? Let's find out!
In this lesson, we are going to learn about VEGETABLES, and we will discuss:
A vegetable is the edible portion of a plant. Vegetables are usually grouped according to the portion of the plant that is eaten such as leaves (lettuce), stem (celery), roots (carrot), bulbs (garlic), tubers (potato), and flower buds (broccoli). It is easy to mismatch them with the fruits. But they differ from fruits. How? Fruits and vegetables are classified depending on which part of the plant they come from. A fruit develops from the flower of a plant, while the other parts of the plant are categorized as vegetables. Fruits contain seeds, while vegetables can consist of roots, stems, bulbs, unopened flowers, and leaves.
More than a thousand species of vegetables are cultivated worldwide. And, there are thousands of different varieties of vegetables with many different uses and growth forms.
From now, can we guess which of the following plants are vegetables?
Let's take some examples.
The carrot we eat grows inside the ground. Actually, that is the root of the plant. And we said that vegetables are the edible portions of the plant, except the fruit that develops from the flower of a plant. So the carrot is a vegetable. Can you think of some other roots we eat? What about beetroot? Yes, it is! The name already tells us that is a root, beet-root, right?
Now let's see about the well-known spinach. What part of the plant spinach is? The spinach is a leaf. And this means it is a vegetable. Other leafy vegetables we eat are cabbage, kale, lettuce, and so on.
Now think of celery. Do you know how it looks? It has several stems on which the leaves grow. Both parts are edible. So we eat the stem, and the leaves, so it means celery is a vegetable. The stems of other plants are edible too, like those of asparagus.
Onion and garlic are examples of bulbs and are vegetables.
If you think of broccoli or cauliflower now, you might think that the part we eat is the flower of the plant. So, by definition, broccoli and cauliflower will not be vegetables, but fruits. But is that true? Even if we think that broccoli and cauliflower are technically fruits, they're actually not, because they're unopened flower buds that have not yet developed. Therefore, broccoli and cauliflower are vegetables.
And the potato? The part of the potato that we eat is called a "tuber". What is a tuber? It is an expansion of the underground stem that stores starch to be used as food for the new plants. Potato is a vegetable.
And now, think of tomato. What do you think? Is it a vegetable or a fruit?
The tomato is a part of a plant that is grown up from the flower of the plant, and inside the tomato, we can see the seeds. Although it is considered a vegetable, we would call it a fruit. Do you agree? Actually, a tomato is a fruit by definition. So does the well-known cucumber. Cucumbers are also fruits!
I guess, now you are curious about peas? Let's clarify that. What part of the plant are the peas? The peas (or beans) are the seed of the plant. They all grow in the same kind of pod that is the fruit of the plant. So, by the definition, they are considered fruits!
Now, we can easily group the vegetables, according to the edible part of the plant.
Vegetables are a very important part of a healthy, balanced diet and can help you stay healthy. It's important that you eat enough of them. Evidence shows there are significant health benefits.
We can eat them raw, boiled, steamed, roasted, baked, or fried.
But, that doesn't mean that all of them can be eaten raw, which means they must be cooked before consumption. Such example is potatoes.
Eating enough vegetables on a daily basis, can:
