The food game today features “Is it a fruit or a vegetable?” A family tree labelled fruit. A family tree labelled vegetable or veggie. With the MyPlate having different spaces for the fruit and veggie, being on the correct family tree is vitally important. Vital as in nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and healthy for the body vital.

Fruits come from the flowers of the plant. They naturally come with seeds. Naturally as in theseedless variety of grapes and cucumbers had seeds before science made them seedless, therefore they are fruits. Tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, avocados, and peppers are fruits.

Remind me to put the green bean recipe in the fruit section of my recipe book. Vegetables are the leaves, stalks, and roots or tubers of the plant. I hear the spinach, potatoes, asparagus, celery, and salad greens applauding. I look in my refrigerator vegetable bin. I spy an avocado. Avocados are from a flower and have a seed, hence a fruit. The avocado is turning brown, upset that the other veggies want it out of this veggie bin.

The avocado whispers about the Harvard Health Letter of 2018 where the avocado was featured as the “Vegetable of the month: Avocado”. The avocado smiles. The other veggies wonder how a fruit was chosen as the “Vegetable of the month”.

With empathy, I stared at these avocados. The avocados in my veggie bin had become crazed, feeling trapped, devoid of family ties. Get me out of here, the avocados screamed, turning from green to brown.

The fruit avocado is the active partner in delicious guacamole, scrumptious salads, tasty toast, avocado oil, and my very fudgy, gluten free brownies. This fruit is heart healthy, with good unsaturated fat, full of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. I surmise that this fruit is disguised as a vegetable because other fruits were jealous of such accolades.

It is with joyful sadness that the avocados sacrificed so much this day. Being skinned, knifed, sliced, pulverized, mixed with Cocoa, baked to perfection, cooled, sliced, and frozen. This fruit changed its identity, disguised by its chocolate companion, becoming an integral part of my fudgy gluten-free avocado brownies.

With glee, the avocado keeps its health benefits. Thanks, Nicole Hunn of Gluten on a Shoestring, for this recipe, “Gluten Free Avocados Brownies”, https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/avocado-brownies/

More Gameday kids-friendly activities are found in the Kids Activities Book. For more detailed fruit versus vegetable identification, see the Foods on MyPlate Explained Book at DrMarleneMD.com

Harvard Health Letter, (June 2018), Vegetable of the month: Avocado, Harvard Health Publishing
Harvard Medical School, https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/vegetable-of-the-month-
avocado
Hunn, N., (January 23, 2017), Gluten Free Avocado Brownies, Gluten Free on a Shoestring,
https://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/avocado-brownies/
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