The U.S. Supreme Court rules that tomatoes are vegetables - May 10th, 1893

On this day in 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Nix v. Hedden that tomatoes are vegetables, not fruits.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio,
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that proves there's more than one way to make history.
I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode, we're talking about
the time when the Supreme Court weighed in on the

(00:21):
all important question of whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables.
The day was May tenth, eighteen ninety three. The US
Supreme Court ruled in the case of Nix v. Headen
that tomatoes are vegetables, not fruits. The unanimous ruling was

(00:46):
controversial for several reasons, but primarily because it flew in
the face of accepted science. In the realm of botany,
a tomato is absolutely a fruit, as it develops from
the fertilized ovary of a plant and contained seeds. A vegetable,
on the other hand, is defined as any edible part
of a plant that doesn't bear seeds. That means that

(01:09):
tomato plants, including their roots, stems, and leaves, are technically vegetables,
but the seed bearing tomatoes that grow from them are
by definition fruits. However, as the Supreme Court showed, scientific
definitions and legal ones don't always agree, so the answer
really depends on who you're asking. That's because in the

(01:32):
late eighteen hundreds there was another major difference between fruits
and vegetables that botanists didn't account for. Namely, imported vegetables
were subject to a ten percent tariff upon arrival in
the United States, while imported fruits were not. The tariff
on vegetables went into effect in eighteen eighty three, and

(01:53):
three years later a Manhattan wholesaler named John Nix discovered
a gray area in the law. When he and his
four sons brought a shipment of Caribbean tomatoes to the
Port of New York, they were slapped with the tariff
on imported vegetables. The Knicks family disputed the fees on
the grounds that tomatoes were actually fruits and therefore exempt

(02:15):
from taxation, but the collector of the port, Edward Hedden,
refused to budge. The following year, the Knixes sued Headen
to recover their tariff duties, and after a six year
long legal battle, the case made its way to the
Supreme Court. The Knicks family's attorney presented the definitions for fruit, vegetable,

(02:36):
and tomato from three different dictionaries and then called in
two fellow produce merchants as witnesses testify as to whether
they considered tomatoes to be fruits or vegetables. The Defense
Council employed many of the same tactics, drawing the Justice's
attention to the Dictionary definitions for squash, pepper, eggplant, and cucumber.

(02:59):
Their argument was that all of those kinds of produce
are biologically fruits, but because people prepare and eat them
like vegetables, they should be classified as such and taxed accordingly.
In the end, the Supreme Court agreed with that line
of reasoning, probably because it wasn't the first time they'd heard. It.

(03:19):
Turned out there was precedent for treating one variety of
food as another for the purposes of trade and commerce.
In the eighteen ninety two case of Robertson versus Slomon,
the Court ruled that beans should be considered vegetables rather
than seeds. The Justice's rationale was that while both are

(03:39):
technically seeds quote in the language of botany or natural history,
they are not in commerce nor in common parlance. Justice
Horace Gray came to a very similar conclusion when drafting
the Court's unanimous decision in the case of Nix v.
Headin botanically speaking, he wrote, tomatoes are the fruit of

(04:02):
a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas.
But in the common language of the people, whether cellars
or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are
grown in kitchen gardens, in which whether eaten, cooked or raw,
are like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery,

(04:25):
and lettuce, usually served at dinner, and not like fruits
generally as dessert. In other words, a tomato is a
vegetable in the eyes of the law, because that's how
most people think of it, and because tariff laws pertain
to commerce rather than science, they adhere to the commercial
definition rather than the botanical one. The court delivered its

(04:48):
decision on May tenth, eighteen ninety three, and the Knick's
family had to continue paying the ten percent tariff on
every tomato they imported. In the decades since, various tear
fifacts have come and gone, but the court's ruling on
the tomato's classification still stands to this day. Of course,
that doesn't mean the matter is completely settled. Many people

(05:12):
continue to debate whether a tomato is a fruit or
a vegetable, and several states have drawn a hard line
on the issue. Both Louisiana and New Jersey have designated
the tomato as their official state vegetable, with Jersey specifically
citing nix V Hedden in its decision. However, Tennessee and

(05:32):
Ohio rebels that they are have cast their lots with
the botanists by naming the tomato their official state fruit. Arkansas,
on the other hand, took the bilateral approach, declaring the
vine ripe pink tomato as both the state fruit and
the state vegetable. You don't get to say it much,

(05:53):
but well played, Arkansas. I'm Gay Blues and hopefully you
now know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show,
you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,

(06:16):
feel free to send them my way by writing to
this Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to kazb Bias
for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History Class.