YOUR BUSINESS IS OUR BUSINESS: Query whether tomatoes vegetables or fruits

What you need to know:

A kilogramme of the item at the open-air food markets in the nation’s de facto capital Dar es Salaam – which would usually mean 6-10 tomatoes – sells for Sh1,500-2,000!

US Supreme Court and lexicographers differ By Karl Lyimo for some reason or (an) other, the price of tomatoes has rocketed in recent weeks for many an ordinary household in Tanzania to comfortably afford.

A kilogramme of the item at the open-air food markets in the nation’s de facto capital Dar es Salaam – which would usually mean 6-10 tomatoes – sells for Sh1,500-2,000!

That puts tomatoes far out of reach for most Tanzanian families where the statutory (read ’theoretical’) minimum monthly wage is Sh310,000 (roughly US$138) – and the country’s 53m souls are among the world’s 20 poorest populations, with half of them comprising a dormant workforce of mostly jobless youths. Whew!

But: what are tomatoes, pray? The 64,000-(US) Dollar Question here is:

are tomatoes fruits or vegetables?

I ask this question especially because the US Supreme Court in a landmark decision more than a Century ago ruled that a tomato is a VEGETABLE. But lexiconists differ – saying a tomato is a FRUIT!

Indeed, it took the US Supreme Court to determine – rightly or wrongly – that the common garden tomato (of the ‘Lycopersicon esculentum’ genus) is a vegetable, NOT a fruit, for Gawd’s sake! That’s in terms of the US Tariff Act of 1883, as ruled by the Supreme Court on May 10, 1893 in the ‘John Nix & Co. versus Hedden’ cause before it!

Lexicographers think otherwise. For example, the Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1977 Edition) defines a tomato as the product of the perennial plant L. esculentum widely cultivated for its edible fruits (yes: ‘FRUITS!’); usually large, rounded red or yellow pulpy berries! It also defines a ‘berry’ as ‘a pulpy, usually edible fruit – such as currants; grapes, bananas; tomatoes...’

As if that weren’t enough, the ‘New Dictionary of the English Language’ defines ‘tomato’ as ‘a plant native to South America, but widely cultivated in Europe, bearing red or yellow pulpy fruit (yes: ‘FRUIT!’) much used in salads – and earlier called the ‘love-apple...’’ Boy!

And the Wikipedia? ‘The tomato is the edible FRUIT of ‘Solanum lycopersicum’ –commonly known as a tomato plant – which belongs to the nightshade family, Solanaceae....’

To drive the technically-definitive nail home, ‘a tomato is a FRUIT because it is a seed-bearing structure growing from the flowering part of a plant’ – botanically speaking... Sheesh!

Oh, there’re lots more of that stuff in the public domain...

So, why did the US Supreme Court ignore lexicographers, ruling that tomatoes are a vegetable? How did the Court so widely differ from lexicographers?

After all, lexiconically speaking, a VEGETABLE is ‘usually a herbacious plant grown for an edible part which is usually eaten with the principal part of a meal – such as cabbages, carrots, beans, potatoes...’ Really? Oh, I don’t know...

In that Court case: a produce merchant in New York City in the mid-19th Century, John Nix & Co., was required by the New York Port Tax Collector, Edward L. Hedden, to pay tax on ‘vegetables’ imported through the port. Under US Customs Tariff Act-1883, vegetables were taxable; fruits weren’t!

The company went to Court seeking to recover taxes it’d paid under protest on tomatoes it ‘imported’ from Virginia, Florida and Bermuda.

In the event, the Supreme Court unanimously held that “the Tariff Act used the ordinary meaning of the words ‘fruit’ and ‘vegetable,’ instead of the technical botanical meanings!”

Consequently, the Company ‘lost’ the case – and their prepaid tax-money! Baffling? You can say that again! What’s the (so-called) ‘ordinary’ meaning of a ‘tomato’ other than its technical/botanical meaning, pray?

Supreme Court Justice Gray acknowledged that, “botanically, tomatoes are a ‘fruit of the vine;’ nevertheless, they’re seen as ‘vegetables’ because they’re usually eaten as a main course instead of as a dessert!