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FoodOntology
Zucchini not categorized under squash
Hi! I was looking at the classification of zucchini and it appears to currently be living under 'vegetable food product', whereas I think zucchinis botanically are considered a fruit. I know culinarily it can be considered a vegetable though. Is there a way we currently approach that delineation? Additionally, zucchini is a type of squash, but it does not live under 'squash (whole)', which is a child of 'pepo fruit' in the fruit branch. Can and should zucchini be a child of 'squash (whole)'?
This highlights the need for multiple forms of classification. Culinary definitions are important because they result, in some cases, the way the food is taxed. Look no further than Nix v Hedden--that went all the way to the supreme court, in order to classify tomato as a vegetable. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden) Culinary classification is every bit as important as botanical--both should be represented.
On Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 2:04 PM Lauren @.***> wrote:
Hi! I was looking at the classification of zucchini and it appears to currently be living under 'vegetable food product', whereas I think zucchinis botanically are considered a fruit. I know culinarily it can be considered a vegetable though. Is there a way we currently approach that delineation? Additionally, zucchini is a type of squash, but it does not live under 'squash (whole)', which is a child of 'pepo fruit' in the fruit branch. Can and should zucchini be a child of 'squash (whole)'?
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Hi! I would like to point out that in the FoodEX2 classification Courgettes and similar are classified as "fruiting vegetables "
Ah, "Fruiting vegetables" - that's a funny twist.
FoodOn has vegetable (by legal status), so far an empty class but we could add that as a subclass of "Fruit", putting it over in the anatomy hierarchy. Open to changing name, e.g. "fruit legislated as vegetable (whole)" I think it needs its definition tweaked to not reference a plant as a whole but rather a fruit part of a plant. Issue is different countries may have different legislation about this, so we wouldn't want to add subclasses to it unless there was some universal thing to say.
The only "scientific" basis for calling a fruit a vegetable is sensory, organoleptic. A kind of taste, a kind of texture, that maybe yields a certain transformation when cooked. Very fuzzy. I don't think we could find any processes that would be exclusively vegetable or exclusively fruit processes (chopping, ripening, peeling, etc.)?
Do we need a "fruit product legislated as vegetable product" class? e.g. diced zucchini etc. Interestingly we can't literally put anything zucchini-ish under "vegetable food product" if it is defined botanically. We'd have to back off of a biological definition of vegetable to meet grocery store catalog expectations!
FoodOn does have LanguaL's fruit plant used as vegetable term, and similarly "floret plant used as vegetable"(http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/FOODON_03411036), but this only applies to the plant as a whole, which is awkward. Nevertheless I did just add zucchini plant to "fruit plant used as vegetable". I see FoodOn's zucchini equivalency points to too general a plant. I've corrected this to point to "zucchini plant" as well.
Or FoodOn accepts that "vegetable food product" is a flexible class that does not necessarily exclude fruit in the first place, since vegetable spans so many kinds of plant part.
And I have fixed "an and should zucchini be a child of 'squash (whole)'?" It now is in foodon-edit.owl draft.
Indeed, a fruit is a vegetable (an edible part of a plant), but a vegetable is not necessarily a fruit. ...akin to the way that a square is a rectangle...
On Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 10:24 PM Damion Dooley @.***> wrote:
And I have fixed "an and should zucchini be a child of 'squash (whole)'?" It now is in foodon-edit.owl draft.
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Discussed on June 23 call:
- Group was considering / comfortable with moving "plant fruit food product" under "vegetable food product".
- Agreed to rename "vegetable (by legal status" to "fruit legislated as vegetable (whole)".