What's The Most "Vegetable" Vegetable?

The Rest Is Science

Goalhanger

Science, Physics, Mathematics

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Botanically speaking, there is no such thing as a vegetable, so what exactly is sitting on your dinner plate? And if our culinary world is built on biological lies, which plant is actually the most vegetable like? Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens tackle a chaotic intersection of linguistics, plant taxonomy, and nutrition, dismantling the arbitrary categories we use to organise our food, revealing that our supermarket aisles are a scientifically lawless wasteland. It is a strangely profound look at how human language struggles to categorise the natural world, proving that the things we eat every day are far weirder than we think with biological definitions that turn cucumbers and eggplants into fruits, and the nutritional benchmarks we use to invent the concept of a "vegetable" from scratch. ------------------- For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit ⁠⁠https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience⁠⁠ Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli OakleyVideo & Social: Bex TyrrellResearcher: Hannah Dodd-VastiauAssistant Producer: Imee MarriottSenior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-CarterHead Of Digital: Samuel OakleyExec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to The Rest is Science. I'm Michael Stevens.
0:03.0	And I'm Hannah Fry.
0:04.5	And today we're going to talk about vegetables.
0:07.4	In fact, what I want you out there, the listener, to do is, if you can, if you can, comment
0:13.6	below what you believe is the most vegetable vegetable.
0:20.2	And we're not necessarily talking here
0:21.7	about the first vegetable that comes to mind.
0:23.8	We want you to go deep on this.
0:25.5	We want you to get to the soul of what it means to be a vegetable.
0:31.0	What vegetable best personifies, best resembles that wider class.
0:38.5	That's right. That's right.
0:40.0	Pretend you're on family feud and you're asked to name a vegetable and you get the most
0:46.1	points if the most other people named the same one.
0:49.3	All right.
0:49.6	We're talking the most famous, prototypical, obvious vegetable.
0:54.4	As it turns out, the answer is both more difficult and more revealing than you might think.
1:04.6	This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.
1:08.1	The word cancer comes from the Greek carcinos, meaning crab. And Hippocrates
1:13.2	use that word because tumours can spread out like crab's legs. For a long time, cancer was poorly
1:19.7	understood. And so I think because of that, it was almost scarier and people didn't even say
1:24.8	its name. But what science has done since is replace uncertainty with
1:29.2	understanding. But that understanding is an instant. Because cancer isn't just one disease. It's
	...

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