15 Fun Facts You Never Knew About Produce

When you're cooking, sometimes it's less about nutrition and more about getting it done before [...]

When you're cooking, sometimes it's less about nutrition and more about getting it done before your kid's soccer game. Serving up the recommended amounts of produce isn't easy, especially when you cook for kids, but these 15 facts from Mental Floss will make you want produce more than ever! If you've got a picky eater on your hands, maybe telling them these fun facts will convince them to give the greens a try!

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Fun Fact 1:

Tomatoes are technically a fruit, but they are legally defined as a vegetable in the U.S. The 1893 Supreme Court decision Nix vs. Hedden ruled that since tomatoes were typically used in savory dishes they could be taxed as vegetables rather than fruits, and they've been legally recognized as a vegetable ever since.

>>Read more: Ten Totally Awesome Ways to Cook With Tomatoes

Fun Fact 2:

In strictly botanical terms, strawberries and raspberries are not actual berries, but bananas and avocados technically are.

Fun Fact 3:

Swiss chard isn't native to Switzerland — it originally grew near the Mediterranean. It was named by a Swiss botanist in a clever bit of branding.

Fun Fact 4:

The durian, a fruit widely available in Asia, has legions of fans despite being awfully stinky — it smells of rotting meat. The stench is so bad that the fruit has been banned on Singapore's public train systems.

Fun Fact 5:

There actually was a Granny Smith. Maria Ann Sherwood Smith, an English émigré to Australia, allegedly found the shiny green apples that would eventually bear her name in her orchard beside a creek bed during the 1860s. They were apparently a mutation of a French crab apple.

Fun Fact 6:

Potatoes weren't grown in Idaho until 1836. They were introduced there by missionaries moving west.

Fun Fact 7:

The ugli fruit, or Jamaican tangelo, is actually a hybrid of a grapefruit, orange and tangerine. It gained its unseemly name because its creators thought it looked unpalatable when ripe.

Want more fascinating facts about produce? Click here to be taken to the original story on Mental Floss.

Make sure you're washing your produce before you eat it! Check out the Dirty Dozen of produce.

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