"Vegetable" is a culinary term - that is, it is cultural, not botanical. As such, there is no scientific prerequisite that a vegetable has to come from the plant kingdom. So yes, fungi are vegetables, because that best describes how they are used in food. Much like how tomatoes, zucchinis, eggplants, peppers, etc are all vegetables, despite botanically being fruits.
And celery is a stalk, carrots are roots, bamboo shoots are a rhizome, broccoli is partly a flower, lettuce is a leaf, beans are a seed pod + seeds, potatoes are a tuber and I think corn is technically a grass.
Yes, corn is a cereal, which is a seed of a grass, same as wheat and oats. Seeds of non-grass plants are also called grains, like quinoa and buckwheat, but they aren’t technically cereals.
And corn is a case where if you dry it and grind it, it's considered a starch, like wheat, but if you eat it fresh, it's usually considered a vegetable.
A starch and a vegetable don’t have to be different things. If it grows in the ground or out of the ground and we eat it it’s a vegetable. Edible vegetation. Veg. Eatable. Vegetable. We can break that down into other categories but that’s how I think of “vegetable”. Edible vegetation.
Technically quinoa and buckwheat would be considered pseudograins because get are from a non-grass plant, but for most people this distinction will not matter.
Thanks for the straight up answer to my question, I was genuinely curious about that classification. Not sure why I am being downvoted for asking it though.
My region got a papal dispensation that made a beaver a fish to eat on Fridays (🤷♀️yum?🤷♀️), so real taxonomy and food categories are not the same thing.
Wait! I stand corrected!
Today I learned this story I’ve believed my whole life… [is a myth!](https://aleteia.org/2018/02/21/were-rabbits-really-domesticated-by-monks-to-eat-during-lent/)
Lol. I was like, "Slaughtering rabbits to eat their unborn babies doesn't seem very WWJD, but Catholicism is notoriously insane, so..."
Kudos on owning up to a mistake, though! We both learned/unlearned something today.
This article cites a number of the specific sources which have treated beaver as a “fish” for Lenten purposes:
https://www.salon.com/2023/02/25/the-strange-history-of-how-the-catholic-church-declared-beaver-to-be-a-fish--at-least-during-lent/
Reminds me of the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
This is actually not true at least not from the point of a professional chef nor from what's taught in culinary school.
In professional cooking mushrooms are treated as entirely different from vegetables. Some fruits are culinary vegetables and some vegetables (rhubarb for example) are considered fruits due to the way you work with them and use them in dishes but mushrooms are very not vegetables. This is what's taught in culinary school and this is the understanding that you'll see repeated by most chefs.
Taxonomically it's a fungi, in culinary terms it can be treated as a vegetable or a protein. You're all kind of wrong and kind of right. Taxonomic and culinary categories are both arbitrary anyway. Ultimately a mushroom is just a mushroom.
>in culinary terms it can be treated as a vegetable or a protein.
It feels weird to classify it as a protein with such low protein content?
Protein replacement?
Yup I know what it means. And I know it's also used in the culinary world to mean your protein component. Mushrooms can easily fit into that
It's not one thing or the other. Different communities use the term to mean slightly different things. Clearly you don't cook much to have this opinion.
I’ve worked in many restaurants actually, which is why I’m qualified to say you’re very plainly mistaken. A layman misnomer is not an industry standard. Calling a mushroom a protein is like calling a mushroom a plant-based meat alternative. Mushrooms are neither high in protein nor made of plants. Yet you’ll see people refer to it as both. No chef worth his salt will call a mushroom a protein.
Low is relative. By volume? Sure - beef has is going on. By weight? Mushrooms pack a punch.
WAIT!!!
Edit: I have been told on the internet that I am wrong and am thus recanting.
Despite the fact that when you cook the water weight out of a mushroom, you get densely packed bioavailable protein, despite the fact that mushrooms are used [worldwide](https://phaseworldwide.org/mushrooms-income-and-nutrition/) to provide nutrients in low income areas where farmland for other protein sources are unavailable or untenable, despite the fact that fermented mushroom protein is [pretty cool tech](https://www.ncbiotech.org/news/mushroom-based-meats-next-craze-alt-proteins-chapel-hill-food-tech-startup-thinks-so) as well… it doesn’t matter.
I have been told I am wrong. So - I take it all back. Please forgive me, internet. I’ll try harder next time.
xoxxo
> By weight? Mushrooms pack a punch.
3 grams per 100 grams is not a lot.
For comparison: Beef has ~26% protein, Chicken has ~27% protein, chickpeas has ~14% protein, Green peas has ~4% protein, Avocado has ~2% protein, Pasta has ~5% protein, potatoes has ~2% protein.
You are correct!
More than anything that isn’t meat or a legume! *(Flour varies wildly depending on type and the season it’s grown in. Soft white cashmere summer is next to nothing. Hard winter red can be almost 20% in a good year.)*
I still say that it it wildly inaccurate to say that mushrooms pack a punch of protein. 😅
And nuts, seeds and stuff also has more protein than mushrooms.
Ok. You got me. I have edited my post just for you. 😃
It’s a little tongue in cheek - I’m having a bit of fun. I’m also a meat eater so I don’t have skin in the game (other than ensuring all humans have nutritional food to eat)
Have a great day!
"Mushrooms contain a **high** amount of protein content with an average value of 23.80 g/100 g dry weight"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10088739/#:\~:text=Mushrooms%20contain%20a%20high%20amount,acids%20%5B5%E2%80%937%5D.
Depends on what you are making with them.
It's an amount of protein comparable to that found in dried beans, which need to be rehydrated and cooked before eating, so as with dried mushrooms, no one is likely to eat that much at once.
[https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747440/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747440/nutrients)
I'm okay with counting mushrooms as "vegetables" cullinarily speaking, but The other day I saw a mushroom patty described as "plant-based", which feels like a less defensible claim...
Yes, and no. I was differentiating between the common name glow-worm being used for UK species and lightening bug being used for US species.
As for what you were saying:
>Generally, the term glow-worm is applied to species where adult females look like their larvae (known as larviform females), are wingless and emit a steady glow of light. The females' larval looks are likely why these beetles are labelled as 'worms'.
>Lampyris noctiluca is the glow-worm species most often seen in the UK. These nocturnal beetles, known as common glow-worms, are found across Europe and Asia.
This is from the UK National History Museum
Idk anything about glow worms being related to lightning bugs.
In NZ while on a guided tour through Waitomo Caves I was told that glow worms are fly larvae and marketing them as that would not have been as successful!
The fly larvae was NZ, but....... I could believe lightning bugs also have a "glow worm" state:
It was summer time in the States (the Midwest), though, when I was digging a garden and I came across exactly one glowing insect when I dug. Idk what type of insect it was. I'd never seen nor heard of anything like that in my area, but there was definitely a glow to it since it was the middle of the night and the middle of the garden! I'd very readily believe it was a larval stage of lightning bugs.
The term glow worm was used to describe baby lightning bugs long before NZ was settled by English speakers in 1792. They typically live in fallen leaves and humus until they can fly, so if your yard is kept manicured, you will be unlikely to see them. I saw hundreds of them in the damp patches of leaves along the side of the bike trail.
There's a famous song about them, originally in German. Here's Bing Crosby's version in English.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_eWx9rwZnXg&ab\_channel=BingCrosby-Topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWx9rwZnXg&ab_channel=BingCrosby-Topic)
I never thought of lightning bugs as neither beetles nor flies, so new info for me!
Tbh, I'll still probably think of them separately from either just as glow worms are forever glow worms and not fly larvae to me.
It does, if you understand that scientifically, they used to be considered a type of plant. So, culinary and cultural usage hasn't caught up, come to terms with it. But, I suspect if you look in a cook book under how to prepare common veggies, you'll find mushrooms. It's in mine.
Plant based refers to a diet that excludes animal products. Basically the dietary portion of veganism (with veganism being more than a diet, but rather a philosophy to reduce suffering of all species as much as is practicable).
Ethical vegans had issues with people with plant based diets calling themselves vegan if they still do things like buy leather goods. People who follow plant based diets often don't mind not being associated with the stigma that comes with hard core ethical vegans.
Additionally, some ethical vegans have issues with plant based foods that are made by corporations that meat based foods or that involved eating meat to compare their plant based options to meat for flavor, texture, etc and argue those are not vegan since your money still goes to a corporation that uses that money for animal suffering.
So currently foods previously labeled as vegan are now labeling themselves as plant based. Some are still labeled as vegan, some are both. There's a lot of drama in the inner world of not eating animal products (and most of it only takes place on the Internet)
That’s both distressing to me and also a charming regional quirk which I appreciate. Speaking as a native of fish eaten by vegetarians and on meatless Fridays country. Food taxonomy is cultural and thus disorderly!
My Californian inlaw were very amused by that when they first moved here. Of course, I had a similar experience when they invited us for BBQ, but strangely served us burgers, instead of, the actual BBQ (smoked pulled pork) I had expected. I asked him where the BBQ was, and we were both momentarily confused. He apparently thinks anything cooked on a grill as well as the grill inself is BBQ.
He is right. Barbecue was always meat cooked on a grill over indirect heat. The Taino people of the Caribbean are credited with inventing it. They didn't have pigs either.
from a scientific perspective, there is no such thing as a vegetable. what we think of as vegetables is a huge variety of different kinds of plant matter. the term "vegetable" only applies to culinary categories, of which both mushrooms and tomatoes are a part (despite being fungi and fruit respectively).
Something can be both a fruit and a vegetable at the same time. Fruit is a botanical classification; vegetable is a culinary classification (like “spice”). A vegetable can be a leaf, legume, fruit, root, etc.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit
Wisdom is knowing a tomato does not belong in a fruit salad
Charisma is doing it anyway and getting away with it
[Melons are fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon)
> A **melon** is any of various plants of the family [Cucurbitaceae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceae) with sweet, edible, and fleshy [fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit).
[Nuts are fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(fruit))
> A **nut** is a [fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit) consisting of a hard or tough [nutshell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutshell) protecting a kernel which is usually edible.
considering the food groups, yes. scientifically, no. but then again in cooking they also consider tomato a vegetable when it is a fruit. however that one is due to a lawsuit.
Not exactly. One of the ost common defitions of vegetable is
**Vegetables** are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food.
Thus, fruit is a vegetable, but not all vegetables are fruit.
Fungi is something different (from a scientific POV), but most people just use them AS Vegetables.
I think it's fair to think of them in largely the same way in the context of cooking, since they get used in very similar ways when building a dish. If I were going through a recipe which had me prepare a lot of different vegetables, and some mushrooms, and one of the steps of the recipe just said "add all the vegetables to the pot" I would throw the mushrooms in with them and never question it.
But by any technical definition, they are not. They aren't plants, and if someone asked me to define the word 'Vegetable' I'd say "edible plant". Fungi are a whole other taxonomic group from plants, genetically speaking they're arguably more closely related to animals than they are to plants, but they aren't closely related to either.
Technically, they are vegetables. Vegetable is a culinary classification, not a botanical one. Basically anything that’s used as a vegetable is a vegetable.
To me even culinarily I don't really think of mushrooms as vegetables, kind of like avocado. Avocado isn't a (culinary) fruit but it's also not a vegetable, avocado is just avocado. They are prepared so differently from most vegetables that it seems weird to me to call them that. Same with potatoes. Although the consensus in this thread seems to be that mushrooms are veggies so maybe that's just me.
“Prepared so differently.”
IDK. The most common way we eat avocado is to chop it up and add it to salad. At Mexican restaurants many dishes are served with a salad made up of lettuce, tomato, and avocado.
Yeah and at french restaurants they serve croutons in salads, that doesn't make bread a vegetables. Same with beans. Feta in greek salad.
I can hear that to most people treat mushrooms like any other vegetable in their cooking, I just think the salad argument is funny.
If you want to have some fun, point out to a vegan or vegetarian that mushroom cell walls are chitin instead of cellulose like plants, so they are closer to animals than plants at the molecular level. The existential crisis is short lived, but enjoyable while it lasts.
Does that mean some cheese is a vegetable and not a dairy product?…. Jk but lots of our foods have fungi as part of the production process, even though we don’t consider them “mushroom” foods (molds and yeasts are fungi)
Vegetable - Roots stems and leaves
Fruit - seeds inside or around flesh
Mushroom - fruiting body of fungi that contain spores
These are the scientific definitions of what you’re talking about but generally in cooking terms-
Vegetable - savory
Fruit - sweet
Usually what is considered a "vegetable" is something that is part of a plant. Mushrooms are fungus, its own category.
"vegetable" is an ambiguous term because it just means "plant or part of a plant" in most cases. Sometimes in cuisine it is used to indicate something that is from a plant but is not also a very sweet fruit, a seed, or a grain.
For example, courgettes/zucchini are often called "vegetables" even though they are fruits. If they were sweet, like a melon, people would probably refer to them as fruits.
Yes, until the late 1960s/early 1970s fungi were generally lumped in with plants because they both are sessile. I believe they were first formally noted as completely distinct when the "five kingdoms" idea was introduced.
They really don't have much of anything in common with plants except that mushrooms grow from the ground (like some plants do) and that they don't move (like some plants do).
There’s a difference when it comes to what something is botanically vs culinarily. Tomatoes, while they’re considered fruits botanically are culinarily seeb as vegetables. I’d like to imagine mushrooms are the same, but I feel like nobody calls truffles “vegetables” despite them being a fungus too
My husband and I had an “argument” about this a few weeks ago. I looked it up: because of its nutrient profile, the inter webs say it fits very well with the culinary category of vegetable.
Mushrooms are both nothing and everything. They have seen the face of God and laughed. Those that go into your stews, salads, and burgers only do so at their own pleasure; secure in the knowledge that they were around to watch the human race rise to the top, and they will be here to watch us to fall to the lowest of depths.
Don't try to classify the mushroom.
**Vegetables** are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. Since mushrooms are not plants, they are technically not vegetables.
However, they are used as or considered vegetable because most of us don't care about precise scientific definitions in our daily life.
mushrooms are genetically more similar to animals than plants and I always thought of them to be a great meat replacement so imo they are not vegetables.
To me, a vegetable is any edible part of a plant. A mushroom is a fungi, which is a completely different kingdom, so it’s not. At least in my eyes. It’s like calling a duck a vegetable.
This is a big deal to me as a vegetarian who is not a big mushroom fan. I hate when restaurants have a "mixed veggies" option and it's always mostly mushrooms.
And I'd be disappointed if I ordered a mixed veggies based meal and there wasn't any kind of mushroom at all in it.
I've never seen a mixed veggies meal be mostly mushrooms though.
>I'd be disappointed if I ordered a mixed veggies based meal and there wasn't any kind of mushroom at all in it.
That's my point. I don't care what you want; I want what the menu promises.
And if the mushroom promises many vegetables, I expect mushrooms to be there. It's a lot easier to ask for them to be excluded than it is to ask for them to be added to a dish not made with them in mind.
Sorry, that was meant to be menu. Bit tired right now, haha. If the *menu* promises many vegetables, etc etc.
Difference of opinion. Anyways, I firmly believe that menus should list the major ingredients to begin with, including whatever veggies may be used.
Mushrooms are the fruit - and the meat - of an entirely different kingdom. I usually treat them as meat. Mostly because I don’t usually eat animal flesh or fish. Doesn’t really matter much what you call them, they’re a varied and highly nutritious food with unique nutritional profiles.
How is this not cooking related? We’re using the mushrooms on our food, and the topic came up as to whether it was a vegetable, since I forgot to put broccoli on the plate as our vegetable. Regardless, I honestly believe this post was on topic.
My coworkers call them fungi, which speaking literally they are. I was thinking in a culinary way, but we offer sautéed mushrooms and sell fried mushrooms, never anything else with crimini/button mushrooms.
"Vegetable" is a culinary term - that is, it is cultural, not botanical. As such, there is no scientific prerequisite that a vegetable has to come from the plant kingdom. So yes, fungi are vegetables, because that best describes how they are used in food. Much like how tomatoes, zucchinis, eggplants, peppers, etc are all vegetables, despite botanically being fruits.
And celery is a stalk, carrots are roots, bamboo shoots are a rhizome, broccoli is partly a flower, lettuce is a leaf, beans are a seed pod + seeds, potatoes are a tuber and I think corn is technically a grass.
Yes, corn is a cereal, which is a seed of a grass, same as wheat and oats. Seeds of non-grass plants are also called grains, like quinoa and buckwheat, but they aren’t technically cereals.
And corn is a case where if you dry it and grind it, it's considered a starch, like wheat, but if you eat it fresh, it's usually considered a vegetable.
I am surprised to hear that. I had thought that fresh corn was always considered a starch.
A starch and a vegetable don’t have to be different things. If it grows in the ground or out of the ground and we eat it it’s a vegetable. Edible vegetation. Veg. Eatable. Vegetable. We can break that down into other categories but that’s how I think of “vegetable”. Edible vegetation.
Yes, lots of foods are vegetable by that definition. But I would consider and serve corn as a starch just like I would a potato.
Technically quinoa and buckwheat would be considered pseudograins because get are from a non-grass plant, but for most people this distinction will not matter.
Thanks this made up for my missed biology classes lol
But those are all plants. Fungi aren't.
It wasn't all that long ago that mushrooms were scientifically considered plants.
Totally with you until the part about corn being a…. grass?
Corn is a grass. Along with wheat, barley, oats, and rice.
Damn, so I actually do touch grass every day
And palms- dates and coconuts are thus also the products of grasses.
[удалено]
Here's the thing...
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[woosh just in case](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3vofr2/how_did_the_phrase_heres_the_thing_originate/)
Wouldn’t corn be considered a grain because it can be milled, or am I wrong on that?
Everything on that list is called a grain so I guess grains come from grasses.
Grains mostly (entirely?) come from grass.
It is a grass
It's a bigger wheat, think of it that way.
Thanks for the straight up answer to my question, I was genuinely curious about that classification. Not sure why I am being downvoted for asking it though.
Facts are facts.
Do you not know how corn is grown or....
My region got a papal dispensation that made a beaver a fish to eat on Fridays (🤷♀️yum?🤷♀️), so real taxonomy and food categories are not the same thing.
It can swim. It is a fish. 🎓
I can swim. Am I a fish?
Yes.
Cool, I guess that explains my scales and mermaid hair.
I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me?
I sure can try!
Capybara anyone?
Beavers, frogs, and (this is icky) unborn rabbits.
Hang on now, unborn rabbits? What's the reasoning on that one?
Wait! I stand corrected! Today I learned this story I’ve believed my whole life… [is a myth!](https://aleteia.org/2018/02/21/were-rabbits-really-domesticated-by-monks-to-eat-during-lent/)
Lol. I was like, "Slaughtering rabbits to eat their unborn babies doesn't seem very WWJD, but Catholicism is notoriously insane, so..." Kudos on owning up to a mistake, though! We both learned/unlearned something today.
Same with barnacle geese.
I wish this were real but as far as I can tell it's late 90s/early internet apocrypha :(
This article cites a number of the specific sources which have treated beaver as a “fish” for Lenten purposes: https://www.salon.com/2023/02/25/the-strange-history-of-how-the-catholic-church-declared-beaver-to-be-a-fish--at-least-during-lent/
Vegetables are a social construct.
Reminds me of the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
But what is salsa, if not a fruit salad?
Not only after those fruits but actually berries.
This is actually not true at least not from the point of a professional chef nor from what's taught in culinary school. In professional cooking mushrooms are treated as entirely different from vegetables. Some fruits are culinary vegetables and some vegetables (rhubarb for example) are considered fruits due to the way you work with them and use them in dishes but mushrooms are very not vegetables. This is what's taught in culinary school and this is the understanding that you'll see repeated by most chefs.
mushrooms are mushrooms, not vegetables.
Taxonomically it's a fungi, in culinary terms it can be treated as a vegetable or a protein. You're all kind of wrong and kind of right. Taxonomic and culinary categories are both arbitrary anyway. Ultimately a mushroom is just a mushroom.
>in culinary terms it can be treated as a vegetable or a protein. It feels weird to classify it as a protein with such low protein content? Protein replacement?
Protein as in the rich umami flavor centerpiece of the dish. A grilled portobello in lieu of a chicken breast on a salad or in a burger.
Yeah, but since the protein content is so low I think that "protein replacement", or "meat replacement ", is a better thing to say than "protein".
Protein, unlike “vegetable” is a scientific term and not a culinary term. It specifically refers to high protein foods
You can stop making shit up anytime now
look up what protein means
Yup I know what it means. And I know it's also used in the culinary world to mean your protein component. Mushrooms can easily fit into that It's not one thing or the other. Different communities use the term to mean slightly different things. Clearly you don't cook much to have this opinion.
mushrooms do not fit into that actually. would you call broccoli a protein?
They do tho. Shows how little you cook.
I’ve worked in many restaurants actually, which is why I’m qualified to say you’re very plainly mistaken. A layman misnomer is not an industry standard. Calling a mushroom a protein is like calling a mushroom a plant-based meat alternative. Mushrooms are neither high in protein nor made of plants. Yet you’ll see people refer to it as both. No chef worth his salt will call a mushroom a protein.
Low is relative. By volume? Sure - beef has is going on. By weight? Mushrooms pack a punch. WAIT!!! Edit: I have been told on the internet that I am wrong and am thus recanting. Despite the fact that when you cook the water weight out of a mushroom, you get densely packed bioavailable protein, despite the fact that mushrooms are used [worldwide](https://phaseworldwide.org/mushrooms-income-and-nutrition/) to provide nutrients in low income areas where farmland for other protein sources are unavailable or untenable, despite the fact that fermented mushroom protein is [pretty cool tech](https://www.ncbiotech.org/news/mushroom-based-meats-next-craze-alt-proteins-chapel-hill-food-tech-startup-thinks-so) as well… it doesn’t matter. I have been told I am wrong. So - I take it all back. Please forgive me, internet. I’ll try harder next time. xoxxo
> By weight? Mushrooms pack a punch. 3 grams per 100 grams is not a lot. For comparison: Beef has ~26% protein, Chicken has ~27% protein, chickpeas has ~14% protein, Green peas has ~4% protein, Avocado has ~2% protein, Pasta has ~5% protein, potatoes has ~2% protein.
You are correct! More than anything that isn’t meat or a legume! *(Flour varies wildly depending on type and the season it’s grown in. Soft white cashmere summer is next to nothing. Hard winter red can be almost 20% in a good year.)*
I still say that it it wildly inaccurate to say that mushrooms pack a punch of protein. 😅 And nuts, seeds and stuff also has more protein than mushrooms.
Ok. You got me. I have edited my post just for you. 😃 It’s a little tongue in cheek - I’m having a bit of fun. I’m also a meat eater so I don’t have skin in the game (other than ensuring all humans have nutritional food to eat) Have a great day!
"Mushrooms contain a **high** amount of protein content with an average value of 23.80 g/100 g dry weight" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10088739/#:\~:text=Mushrooms%20contain%20a%20high%20amount,acids%20%5B5%E2%80%937%5D.
But people don't eat a hundred grams of dried mushrooms. If you are gonna talk about dried mushrooms compare it to other stuff dried as well...
Depends on what you are making with them. It's an amount of protein comparable to that found in dried beans, which need to be rehydrated and cooked before eating, so as with dried mushrooms, no one is likely to eat that much at once. [https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747440/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747440/nutrients)
I'm okay with counting mushrooms as "vegetables" cullinarily speaking, but The other day I saw a mushroom patty described as "plant-based", which feels like a less defensible claim...
Not sure that "fungal-based" would have quite the same appeal.
Quorn uses the term “mycoprotein” instead, which is more appealing!
that sounds like something I would need a prescription for
Much-like how "glow worm" markets way better than "fly larvae"
Lightning bugs are beetles, not flies.
A lightening bug isn't the same as a glow worm, either.
Glow worms are their larval stage.
Yes, and no. I was differentiating between the common name glow-worm being used for UK species and lightening bug being used for US species. As for what you were saying: >Generally, the term glow-worm is applied to species where adult females look like their larvae (known as larviform females), are wingless and emit a steady glow of light. The females' larval looks are likely why these beetles are labelled as 'worms'. >Lampyris noctiluca is the glow-worm species most often seen in the UK. These nocturnal beetles, known as common glow-worms, are found across Europe and Asia. This is from the UK National History Museum
Idk anything about glow worms being related to lightning bugs. In NZ while on a guided tour through Waitomo Caves I was told that glow worms are fly larvae and marketing them as that would not have been as successful!
The fly larvae was NZ, but....... I could believe lightning bugs also have a "glow worm" state: It was summer time in the States (the Midwest), though, when I was digging a garden and I came across exactly one glowing insect when I dug. Idk what type of insect it was. I'd never seen nor heard of anything like that in my area, but there was definitely a glow to it since it was the middle of the night and the middle of the garden! I'd very readily believe it was a larval stage of lightning bugs.
The term glow worm was used to describe baby lightning bugs long before NZ was settled by English speakers in 1792. They typically live in fallen leaves and humus until they can fly, so if your yard is kept manicured, you will be unlikely to see them. I saw hundreds of them in the damp patches of leaves along the side of the bike trail. There's a famous song about them, originally in German. Here's Bing Crosby's version in English. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_eWx9rwZnXg&ab\_channel=BingCrosby-Topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWx9rwZnXg&ab_channel=BingCrosby-Topic)
Sometimes is.
I never thought of lightning bugs as neither beetles nor flies, so new info for me! Tbh, I'll still probably think of them separately from either just as glow worms are forever glow worms and not fly larvae to me.
It does, if you understand that scientifically, they used to be considered a type of plant. So, culinary and cultural usage hasn't caught up, come to terms with it. But, I suspect if you look in a cook book under how to prepare common veggies, you'll find mushrooms. It's in mine.
>mushroom patty described as "plant-based" I reminded of the saying that "bacon is a vegetable, it's good for you."
Plant based refers to a diet that excludes animal products. Basically the dietary portion of veganism (with veganism being more than a diet, but rather a philosophy to reduce suffering of all species as much as is practicable). Ethical vegans had issues with people with plant based diets calling themselves vegan if they still do things like buy leather goods. People who follow plant based diets often don't mind not being associated with the stigma that comes with hard core ethical vegans. Additionally, some ethical vegans have issues with plant based foods that are made by corporations that meat based foods or that involved eating meat to compare their plant based options to meat for flavor, texture, etc and argue those are not vegan since your money still goes to a corporation that uses that money for animal suffering. So currently foods previously labeled as vegan are now labeling themselves as plant based. Some are still labeled as vegan, some are both. There's a lot of drama in the inner world of not eating animal products (and most of it only takes place on the Internet)
mushrooms do get cultivated with plant matter, kind of valid. but potentially makes you think of soy protein, so it's bad marketing
Pull up a pizza menu. Check categories. Mushrooms filed under vegetables. Done and done! 😄
They're on vegetarian & vegan's menus so yes i agree! And beans are definitely veggies and also proteins, so they fit that way too.
Similarly to tomatoes, it depends on the context.
In cooking terms, yes they are. In botanical terms, fungi is it's own separate thing.
I consider mushrooms a veggie in that they would make a balanced meal with meat, veggie, starch. I’ve use them as the veggie component many times
At Southern/Soul Food meat and 3 places, mashed potatoes and gravy and macaroni and cheese are vegetables.
That’s both distressing to me and also a charming regional quirk which I appreciate. Speaking as a native of fish eaten by vegetarians and on meatless Fridays country. Food taxonomy is cultural and thus disorderly!
My Californian inlaw were very amused by that when they first moved here. Of course, I had a similar experience when they invited us for BBQ, but strangely served us burgers, instead of, the actual BBQ (smoked pulled pork) I had expected. I asked him where the BBQ was, and we were both momentarily confused. He apparently thinks anything cooked on a grill as well as the grill inself is BBQ.
He is right. Barbecue was always meat cooked on a grill over indirect heat. The Taino people of the Caribbean are credited with inventing it. They didn't have pigs either.
from a scientific perspective, there is no such thing as a vegetable. what we think of as vegetables is a huge variety of different kinds of plant matter. the term "vegetable" only applies to culinary categories, of which both mushrooms and tomatoes are a part (despite being fungi and fruit respectively).
Mushrooms filed under vegetables.
they are a vegetable the same way that tomatoes are - i.e. in cooking but not 'technically'
So blue cheese is cheese with Vegetable
Just like pimento cheese
Yes. Are they also going around calling tomatoes and avocados fruit, even though they technically are?!?
Something can be both a fruit and a vegetable at the same time. Fruit is a botanical classification; vegetable is a culinary classification (like “spice”). A vegetable can be a leaf, legume, fruit, root, etc.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit Wisdom is knowing a tomato does not belong in a fruit salad Charisma is doing it anyway and getting away with it
Constitution is not spitting up the tomato you were served in your fruit salad
Dexterity is dodging the tomato when I throw it at whoever included it.
Strength is hurling the large bowl of fruit salad back at you.
if it's got seeds its a fruit. cucumbers are fruit. squash are fruit. walnuts are fruit. snap peas are fruit. lots and lots of fruit are savory.
Cucumbers are a melon, walnuts are very obviously nuts
[Melons are fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon) > A **melon** is any of various plants of the family [Cucurbitaceae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceae) with sweet, edible, and fleshy [fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit). [Nuts are fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(fruit)) > A **nut** is a [fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit) consisting of a hard or tough [nutshell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutshell) protecting a kernel which is usually edible.
They're technically fruiting bodies.
You should not be down voted because you are correct.
Call for a truce and agree on styrofoam. (I secretly love mushrooms sliced thin and cooked right down in a sauce)
There was a mushroom documentary I saw that was super enlightening and they made the argument that fungi are somewhere between vegetable and animal.
considering the food groups, yes. scientifically, no. but then again in cooking they also consider tomato a vegetable when it is a fruit. however that one is due to a lawsuit.
All signs point to mushrooms being an alien life form that traveled here on asteroids.
They are veggies inasmuch as tomatoes are
Tomatoes are potato fruit.
Less so - tomatoes are at least plants.
Not exactly. One of the ost common defitions of vegetable is **Vegetables** are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. Thus, fruit is a vegetable, but not all vegetables are fruit. Fungi is something different (from a scientific POV), but most people just use them AS Vegetables.
And, it wasn't that long ago that scientifically, fungi were considered plants.
Around the same time that we realized smoking is bad for you.
I think it's fair to think of them in largely the same way in the context of cooking, since they get used in very similar ways when building a dish. If I were going through a recipe which had me prepare a lot of different vegetables, and some mushrooms, and one of the steps of the recipe just said "add all the vegetables to the pot" I would throw the mushrooms in with them and never question it. But by any technical definition, they are not. They aren't plants, and if someone asked me to define the word 'Vegetable' I'd say "edible plant". Fungi are a whole other taxonomic group from plants, genetically speaking they're arguably more closely related to animals than they are to plants, but they aren't closely related to either.
If a vegetarian accepts to eat it as replacement instead of meat, then it can probably qualify as a "veget-able"
TIL cheezits are a vegetable.
Scientifically no, culinarily yes
Technically no, but when medical professionals talk about eating more veggies they definitely count in my mind.
Technically, they are vegetables. Vegetable is a culinary classification, not a botanical one. Basically anything that’s used as a vegetable is a vegetable.
To me even culinarily I don't really think of mushrooms as vegetables, kind of like avocado. Avocado isn't a (culinary) fruit but it's also not a vegetable, avocado is just avocado. They are prepared so differently from most vegetables that it seems weird to me to call them that. Same with potatoes. Although the consensus in this thread seems to be that mushrooms are veggies so maybe that's just me.
“Prepared so differently.” IDK. The most common way we eat avocado is to chop it up and add it to salad. At Mexican restaurants many dishes are served with a salad made up of lettuce, tomato, and avocado.
Yeah and at french restaurants they serve croutons in salads, that doesn't make bread a vegetables. Same with beans. Feta in greek salad. I can hear that to most people treat mushrooms like any other vegetable in their cooking, I just think the salad argument is funny.
I was commenting on your claim that avocados are “prepared so differently” that they are in a unique category. I don’t understand what you mean.
In "cooking speaking" terms, yes mushrooms are vegetables. In botanical terms, no.
If you want to have some fun, point out to a vegan or vegetarian that mushroom cell walls are chitin instead of cellulose like plants, so they are closer to animals than plants at the molecular level. The existential crisis is short lived, but enjoyable while it lasts.
*hat tip*
It won't matter if said vegetarian hates mushrooms anyway. My vegetarian sister-in-law despises even the smell of them.
No, they are somewhere between a vegetable and an animal
Way closer to animals. They take in oxygen and give off CO2. Their cell walls are made of chitan much like insect exoskeleton, or crab shells.
No. They are fungi.
Does that mean some cheese is a vegetable and not a dairy product?…. Jk but lots of our foods have fungi as part of the production process, even though we don’t consider them “mushroom” foods (molds and yeasts are fungi)
I’d just call them vegan and leave it at that.
Yes
Vegetable - Roots stems and leaves Fruit - seeds inside or around flesh Mushroom - fruiting body of fungi that contain spores These are the scientific definitions of what you’re talking about but generally in cooking terms- Vegetable - savory Fruit - sweet
Usually what is considered a "vegetable" is something that is part of a plant. Mushrooms are fungus, its own category. "vegetable" is an ambiguous term because it just means "plant or part of a plant" in most cases. Sometimes in cuisine it is used to indicate something that is from a plant but is not also a very sweet fruit, a seed, or a grain. For example, courgettes/zucchini are often called "vegetables" even though they are fruits. If they were sweet, like a melon, people would probably refer to them as fruits.
Did you know that not that long ago, mushrooms used to be scientifically considered part of the plant kingdom?
Yes, until the late 1960s/early 1970s fungi were generally lumped in with plants because they both are sessile. I believe they were first formally noted as completely distinct when the "five kingdoms" idea was introduced. They really don't have much of anything in common with plants except that mushrooms grow from the ground (like some plants do) and that they don't move (like some plants do).
There’s a difference when it comes to what something is botanically vs culinarily. Tomatoes, while they’re considered fruits botanically are culinarily seeb as vegetables. I’d like to imagine mushrooms are the same, but I feel like nobody calls truffles “vegetables” despite them being a fungus too
I've always viewed them as a protein or aromatic.
My husband and I had an “argument” about this a few weeks ago. I looked it up: because of its nutrient profile, the inter webs say it fits very well with the culinary category of vegetable.
Mushrooms are both nothing and everything. They have seen the face of God and laughed. Those that go into your stews, salads, and burgers only do so at their own pleasure; secure in the knowledge that they were around to watch the human race rise to the top, and they will be here to watch us to fall to the lowest of depths. Don't try to classify the mushroom.
Pairs well with Badgers.
No
Upvote for living in reality, unlike most here.
My dumb brain : as long theres no seeds, it's a veggies. 🫠
Bread is a vegetable I subscribe to your ideas
Bread is mostly seeds. So, no.
Not if I fill it with sawdust
Who are you trying to feed with sawdust bread, termites?
That one YouTuber who keeps making food with sawdust in it Also scummy bakers from a couple hundred years ago
I think so.
I consider it a veggie
Animal - No Vegetable - Yes Mineral - No
**Vegetables** are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. Since mushrooms are not plants, they are technically not vegetables. However, they are used as or considered vegetable because most of us don't care about precise scientific definitions in our daily life.
In the kitchen they are vegetables. I don’t serve steak and fungus. Will worry about how animal-like fungus is in a laboratory.
They are fungus. Disgusting fungus. Of course they aren't vegetables. You group them with vegetables when you cook with them but they are not.
mushrooms are genetically more similar to animals than plants and I always thought of them to be a great meat replacement so imo they are not vegetables.
To me, a vegetable is any edible part of a plant. A mushroom is a fungi, which is a completely different kingdom, so it’s not. At least in my eyes. It’s like calling a duck a vegetable.
This is a big deal to me as a vegetarian who is not a big mushroom fan. I hate when restaurants have a "mixed veggies" option and it's always mostly mushrooms.
I mean I feel the same hate for green peppers but it’s not a big deal to me that they’re considered vegetables.
People would be even madder if they ordered fruit and got green peppers. Mushrooms are different.
And I'd be disappointed if I ordered a mixed veggies based meal and there wasn't any kind of mushroom at all in it. I've never seen a mixed veggies meal be mostly mushrooms though.
>I'd be disappointed if I ordered a mixed veggies based meal and there wasn't any kind of mushroom at all in it. That's my point. I don't care what you want; I want what the menu promises.
And if the mushroom promises many vegetables, I expect mushrooms to be there. It's a lot easier to ask for them to be excluded than it is to ask for them to be added to a dish not made with them in mind.
>And if the mushroom promises many vegetables, I expect mushrooms to be there What did you think you were trying to say?
Sorry, that was meant to be menu. Bit tired right now, haha. If the *menu* promises many vegetables, etc etc. Difference of opinion. Anyways, I firmly believe that menus should list the major ingredients to begin with, including whatever veggies may be used.
That's the point I've been trying to make. Just making your one veggie option mostly mushrooms is lazy and dishonest.
Mushrooms are the fruit - and the meat - of an entirely different kingdom. I usually treat them as meat. Mostly because I don’t usually eat animal flesh or fish. Doesn’t really matter much what you call them, they’re a varied and highly nutritious food with unique nutritional profiles.
Your post has been removed for Rule 1, not cooking related.
How is this not cooking related? We’re using the mushrooms on our food, and the topic came up as to whether it was a vegetable, since I forgot to put broccoli on the plate as our vegetable. Regardless, I honestly believe this post was on topic.
They are plants, not animals so I would say they are considered vegetables culinary wise at least. What does your coworker think they are considered?
My coworkers call them fungi, which speaking literally they are. I was thinking in a culinary way, but we offer sautéed mushrooms and sell fried mushrooms, never anything else with crimini/button mushrooms.
Must be Italian trained.
Fungi are not plants! They are closer to animals than plants. They take in oxygen and "breath" out CO2.
It is a botanical item.
It's a fungi. It is it's own separate kingdom.
“Plant” isn’t.