Connect with us

Popular Science

Is Corn a Fruit, Vegetable, or Grain?

We all know the is-a-tomato-a-fruit debate (the answer is yes, but you still shouldn’t put it in a fruit salad). Now we’d like to bring you a whole new botanical question you never knew you had: Is corn a fruit or a vegetable—or is it a grain? The answer is…complicated. It has to do with…

Published

on

We all know the is-a-tomato-a-fruit debate (the answer is yes, but you still shouldn’t put it in a fruit salad). Now we’d like to bring you a whole new botanical question you never knew you had: Is corn a fruit or a vegetable—or is it a grain?

The answer is…complicated. It has to do with the way foods are categorized and defined.

Learn more:

for more Popular Science on YouTube ►►

Producer/Video by: Jason Lederman

Narrator: Jessica Boddy

Researcher: Sara Chodosh

Cameras:
Canon EOS C100 –
Canon EOS 5D Mark III –

Additional equipment:
Canon EF50mm Lens –
Canon Zoom Lens EF24-105mm –
Sachtler Ace XL Tripod System –
Sennheiser EW100ENG G3 Camera Wireless Mic Kit –
Litepanels Astra E 1×1 Daylight LED Panel –
Lowepro Magnum 650 AW Shoulder Bag –
The North Face Base Camp Duffel –

Music: APM Music

Media: Pond5, Pixabay

GET MORE POPULAR SCIENCE

E-mail newsletter:

Flipboard:

Podcasts:

Continue Reading
Advertisement
25 Comments

25 Comments

  1. Thomas Wepfer

    November 8, 2019 at 3:43 pm

    I thought it is a grain, because it is a grass.

    • JimPeachley

      November 9, 2019 at 2:22 pm

      My thinking exactly. It grows and forms identically to other grass grainheads; we just eat it before it hardens. Not much of a debate.

  2. Shad Frigi

    November 8, 2019 at 8:24 pm

    “Pumpkins, peas, and peppers are all technically fruits.” What?

  3. Adam Ed

    November 8, 2019 at 8:24 pm

    “Pumpkins, peas, and peppers are all technically fruits.” What?

  4. Shad Ed

    November 8, 2019 at 8:24 pm

    “Pumpkins, peas, and peppers are all technically fruits.” What?

  5. BnORailFan

    November 8, 2019 at 11:06 pm

    I want corn, peas, pumpkins, tomatoes and peppers on my fruit salad!

  6. A3Kr0n

    November 8, 2019 at 11:25 pm

    We should call it what the scientists say it is and not perpetuate inaccurate language.

  7. Brother Nobody

    November 9, 2019 at 1:02 pm

    so what you’re telling me is, and I’m not really complaining, that cornsilk is basically corn pubes? Interesting…

  8. BuddyL

    November 9, 2019 at 7:07 pm

    *ALSO* : the reason 🌽 looks the way it does is because of – wait for it – genetic modification.

    GMOs 🔬 are *NOT* the problem.
    (Monsanto is an evil company, but GMOs are a great science that will feed us all.)

    • Buck Field

      November 9, 2019 at 10:01 pm

      Perhaps they will, but decades of massive investment to prevent research which would clearly and unequivocally establish their safety seems worth considering, IMO.

    • The Casual Gamer

      November 12, 2019 at 10:51 am

      Regardless of Monsanto and what they have done. Almost all modern fruits and vegetables today are a GMO. Even the ones they say aren’t. because the selective breading of plants is the beginning of being genetically modified, not just taking a tomato and adding a gene from fish to make it more tolerant to frost. Almonds, those are GMO’s too. They are California’s number 1 export. Almonds are a genetically modified peach designed to have a larger seed and no fleshy sweet fruit. So, next time you are in the grocery store or parroting the produce in an ad and you read anything about something being organic or non GMO, just know its pretty much all bullshit. Organic has to do with how its grown(no pesticides, etc.), and anything identified as a non GMO is false.

    • Buck Field

      November 12, 2019 at 8:13 pm

      @The Casual Gamer When evidence is presented that the term GMO was used prior to artificial genetic modification accomplished using biotechnology, I will consider such a position to have some small validity.

      Until then, this argument seems to be almost exclusively used within false equivalence fallacies in unjustified support of minimizing consideration of risk, as is the case here.

      This is not to say that many risk assessments of GMOs are not paranoid or otherwise poorly founded…they certainly have their share of fallacious arguments as well.

    • Daniel Rodriguez

      January 12, 2020 at 11:54 pm

      You’re right monsato is a criminal organization, they sure are evil ,

  9. Ankle Donna

    November 9, 2019 at 11:51 pm

    Some varieties of corn are really good and tasty freshly picked and shucked in the field . . . no cooking required.

    • The Writers Round

      July 14, 2020 at 9:02 pm

      I’ve heard of Japanese corn being that sweet! Sadly, there is a lectin movement demonizing corn and tomatoes…

  10. Brian Ticknor

    November 11, 2019 at 10:52 pm

    Corn is a grain

  11. The Casual Gamer

    November 12, 2019 at 10:33 am

    considering I am a agriculture major, I already knew the answer to this question… there are many other fruit/vegetable mixes that can be arguable towards either a fruit or a vegetable. to name a few, artichoke, broccoli and cauliflower. I feel like they should have the basics of what is and is not a fruit/vegetable in the produce departments of grocery stores. teach people a thing or 2 about their food and where it comes from. cuz people here in California, are real dumb when it comes to that stuff…

    • Daniel Rodriguez

      January 12, 2020 at 11:57 pm

      Lol you’re right about the folks in commiefornia, they are too busy coloring there hair, and wanting to give Illigals there jobs and money and learning to hate Trump

  12. 陈王

    November 19, 2019 at 3:52 pm

    Can somebody tell me why shouldn’t put tomato in a fruit salad

  13. Daniel Rodriguez

    January 12, 2020 at 11:53 pm

    Tomatoes are fruits too,

  14. BlueWater

    February 7, 2020 at 3:01 pm

    I asked my friend is a cucumber,tomato,pepper,corn and pumpkin a vegetable he said yes oh and peas

  15. Just a Guy

    April 28, 2020 at 4:26 am

    I hate this video

  16. The Writers Round

    July 14, 2020 at 8:59 pm

    2:39 (sigh) Pun….
    Boooooooooooooooo!!!!

  17. Michael Castaneda

    August 2, 2020 at 6:55 pm

    So corn is a fucking fruit lied to all my life

  18. Krys Cyrus C. Javier

    August 24, 2020 at 9:03 am

    I love corn some people doesn’t like it idk why

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Popular Science

How to Make a YouTube Video in 1987

Decades before software like Premiere and iMovie made video editing cheap, easy, and accessible for everyone, the only option was chaining a conglomerate of vintage 80s technology – multiple camcorders or VCRs and a TV – to craft custom analog video. Then the Videonics system changed tech history forever. With professional-grade setups costing up to…

Published

on

Decades before software like Premiere and iMovie made video editing cheap, easy, and accessible for everyone, the only option was chaining a conglomerate of vintage 80s technology – multiple camcorders or VCRs and a TV – to craft custom analog video. Then the Videonics system changed tech history forever.

With professional-grade setups costing up to six figures at the time, the Videonics brought simple editing to the masses at a tiny fraction of the price… in theory. The reality of the Videonics video editing system was a jumbled mess of retro tech that took a near-miracle to make your kid’s 8th grade jazz band concert video look a little more polished.

And getting it all to work over 35 years later? It took 8 VCRs, 2 camcorders, 3 Videonics units and 4 remotes to create a 1987-era YouTube masterpiece. But in the end, it revealed the beauty and drive of the first-generation analog filmmakers and videographers who made YouTube possible for all of us.

GummyRoach:
Weird Paul:
TechnologyConnections:

#retrotech #analog #vhs #filmmaking

Continue Reading

Popular Science

The $68 Million Instant Movie Disaster (Polavision)

Nearly 50 years ago, the Polavision camera blended Polaroid’s revolutionary instant film with on-demand home video – and the result was a landmark advance in analog technology that would become a mystery of science and a winding international journey into vintage tech. Because now, generations after Edwin Land bet his half-century legacy of innovation and…

Published

on

Nearly 50 years ago, the Polavision camera blended Polaroid’s revolutionary instant film with on-demand home video – and the result was a landmark advance in analog technology that would become a mystery of science and a winding international journey into vintage tech.

Because now, generations after Edwin Land bet his half-century legacy of innovation and the company he founded on the success of the Polavision, I need to figure out how to get the thing to work… and only one man in the world could help me.

I traveled to Vienna, Austria to meet Florian “Doc” Kaps – the man behind ‘The Impossible Project’ that saved Polaroid from the dustbin of history. With his guidance and his private store of old Polaroid video tapes, perhaps I would be able to record a modern YouTube video with my vintage Polavision camera.

Through it all, Doc immersed me into his world of analog technology and the philosophy behind his mission to re-integrate analog into our daily lives. We cut lacquer records, we felt the fires of an analog restaurant, and we spent too much time trying to resurrect a relic of the past – because technology, vintage and modern, is all about people.

#polaroid #analog #vintagetech #history #cameras #documentary

Continue Reading

Popular Science

We Mapped a Fly’s BRAIN

A global team of 287 researchers have combined over 100 terabytes of data to create a full map of a fruit fly’s brain, which includes 139,255 individual neurons and 50 million connections. Popular Science, “Scientists mapped every neuron of an adult animal’s brain for the first time”: #science #sciencefacts #weirdscience #biology #research

Published

on

A global team of 287 researchers have combined over 100 terabytes of data to create a full map of a fruit fly’s brain, which includes 139,255 individual neurons and 50 million connections.

Popular Science, “Scientists mapped every neuron of an adult animal’s brain for the first time”:

#science #sciencefacts #weirdscience #biology #research

Continue Reading

Trending