Few things are better on a hot summer day than enjoying a nice healthy snack of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries,  or strawberries, right?

But while these items might taste great, they can also cause you to lose friends and get in fights on the Internet if you’re not careful.

Why?

Because despite their names, not all of these snacks are berries. Likewise, other things that most people would not consider berries actually are.

The proper way to classify various fruits, vegetables, and other foods is not nearly as intuitive as most people would think, and just like all things these days, there are strong and conflicting opinions.

Actually, of the fruits I originally listed, only blueberries are actual berries. The rest fall into other categories of fruit.

Scientifically speaking, the term fruit is the fleshy ovary from a flowering plant. This part of the plant encloses one or more seeds. Fruit is the top of this category, under which are multiple sub-categories: accessory, multiple, simple, and aggregate.

Under those sub-categories, foods are broken down even further into things like pomes, berries, drupes, and more. It can get pretty confusing pretty quickly.

To help clarify, let’s at least look at the four main sub-categories of fruit and see how they are defined:

• Accessory Fruits – These fruits come from parts of the plant’s flower other than the ovary.
• Multiple Fruits – When a fruit comes from a cluster of multiple flowers, they fall in this category.
• Simple Fruits – If one fruit comes from one flower that has one ovary (or fused carpels) they are simple fruits.
• Aggregate Fruits – Fruit that comes from one flower but has multiple ovaries or carpels, they are aggregate fruits.

So, if you really wanted to have a bowl full of (scientifically accurate) berries, what could you add to it beyond blueberries?

Well, you could enjoy cranberries, elderberries, black currants, watermelons, bananas, grapes, eggplant, or tomatoes, among others.

That’s right, while the iconic strawberry is not a berry, bananas and even eggplant actually are.

So, unless you are a botanist who really needs to know the proper classification of each type of plant, it is best not to think too much about what foods are and are not berries.

And don’t even get me started on vegetables.

When talking about fruit, you can either be scientifically correct or you can get invited to parties.

Not both.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about why we should be worried about the leak in the bottom of the ocean.