Short answers, pulled from the story.
In 1893, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, and is taxed as one under the Tariff of 1883 on imported produce. The court acknowledged that, botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.
A vegetable is an edible part of a plant consumed as food, which can include roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. A more precise definition is any plant part eaten as food that is not a fruit or seed, while still including mature fruits eaten as part of a main meal.
Vegetables were first foraged from the wild by hunter-gatherers and entered cultivation as a new agricultural way of life developed. It is likely that various peoples around the world began growing crops in the period 10,000 BC to 7,000 BC.
China is the largest producer of vegetables. In 2010, China grew over half the world's production, totaling 539,993 thousand tonnes, with India, the United States, Turkey, Iran, and Egypt as the next largest producers.
Nutritionists often recommend five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, and the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend five to nine servings daily. People who eat more than five servings have about a twenty percent lower risk of developing coronary heart disease or stroke compared with those eating fewer than three.
Vegetables often contain toxins and antinutrients such as alpha-solanine, oxalic acid, tannins, and cyanide precursors, which serve as natural defenses to ward off insects, predators, and fungi. Many of these toxins can be deactivated by adequate cooking, though green potatoes contain glycoalkaloids and should be avoided.
The word vegetable was first recorded in English in the early 15th century, borrowed from Old French and originally applied to all plants. It derives from Medieval Latin vegetabilis, meaning growing or flourishing, and its meaning of a plant grown for food was not established until the 18th century.