image:The farmer's market near the Potala in Lhasa.jpg The term "vegetable" generally means the edible parts of plants. The definition of the word is traditional rather than scientific, however. Therefore the usage is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, as it is determined by individual cultural customs of food selection and food preparation.

Generally speaking, a herbaceous plant or plant part which is regularly eaten as unsweetened or salted food by humans is considered to be a vegetable.Fact: date=September 2008 Mushrooms belong to the biological kingdom Fungi, not the plant kingdom, and yet they are also generally considered to be vegetables, at least in the retail industry. Nuts, seeds, grains, herbs, spices and culinary fruits are usually not considered to be vegetables, even though all of them are edible parts of plants.

In general, vegetables are those plant parts that are regarded as being suitable to be part of savory or salted dishes, rather than sweet dishes. Who: date=September 2008However there are many exceptions, such as for example the pumpkin, which can be eaten as a savory dish, a vegetable, but which can also be sweetened and served in a pie as a dessert.

Some vegetables, such as carrots, bell peppers and celery, are eaten either raw or cooked; while others, such as potatoes, are eaten only when cooked.

For many different kinds of vegetables, please see the list of vegetables.

Is it a fruit or a vegetable?

The word "vegetable", in its modern usage, is strictly a culinary term, and is not in any way a botanical or scientific term. The word "fruit" on the other hand can be a culinary term, or a botanical term, and these two usages are quite different.

Botanically speaking, fruits are fleshy reproductive organs of plants, the ripened ovaries containing one or many seeds. Thus, many botanical fruits are not edible at all, and some are actually extremely poisonous.

In a culinary sense however, the word "fruit" is only applied to those botanical fruits or similar plant parts which are both edible and palatable, and which in addition are considered suitable to be a sweet or dessert food, such as strawberries, peaches, plums, etc.

The question "The tomato: is it a fruit, or is it a vegetable?" found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893. The court ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is correctly identified as, and thus taxed as, a vegetable, for the purposes of the 1883 Tariff Act on imported produce. The court did acknowledge however that botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.