Fruit or Veggie?

From:  "mark earl"

Is a pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?

Seb first answered with this: 

As to whether a pumpkin (or tomato or whatnot) is a fruit or a veggie depends on who you ask. Legally speaking, both are vegetables. Horticulturally speaking both are fruits (cuz they've got seeds)

TB faithfully sent in this: 

By definition it is a fruit but it is referred to as a vegetable. A fruit has seeds in its edible flesh. More accurately, the usually edible reproductive body of a seed plant. A vegetable is a herbaceous plant grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal. Pumpkins, cucumbers, eggplants, squashes, etc. are all fruit.

jorrie added this response: 

Actually its not one of the above. Believe it or not it is a root of the plant. After years of drought it evolved so much that in can now finally lie on the ground and directly catch the water from the sky.

amrshalakanidr simply answered with this: 

it's a fruit......scientifically speaking... the word fruit equals not "sweet".

Food expert sent in this report: 

Fruit has seeds/pips inside ex. orange, melon, cherry even the black bits in bananas - vegetables don't. ex. carrot, potato, turnip. Vegetables also mostly grow under ground.
Beans don't count as they come under the heading 'pulses'.
This makes pumpkin a fruit - as are tomatoes - another tricky one - although people generally classify them under another category of 'salad'

Stu responded with this: 

Is a pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?
Pumpkin is a fruit. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pumpkin

Geoffrey Ludwig believes this: 

A pumpkin is a vegetable. It falls in the squash family.

answerman concluded with this: 

"The Nutriquest team offers a similar answer, adding that most fruits are sweet because they contain a simple sugar called fructose, while most vegetables are less sweet because they have much less fructose. The sweetness of fruit encourages animals to eat it and thereby spread the seeds."
Based on the above explanations, a pumpkin is a fruit, just as are tomatoes, cucumbers, sqashes, avocado, green, yellow, and red peppers and peapods.