It's ridiculous!

[DanaC]

They're on the 5 a day list too!

*smiles* it's clearly worked out in a very non-vegetably-fruity way, in order to achieve the best spread of vitamins, nutrients and anti-oxidants. The beans that are included tend to be the highly coloured shiny ones. Sweetcorn is the only 'grain' included, which given its colour and texture I can see how that might offer similar advantages to a brightly coloured fleshy veg.

The purpose, after all, of eating five veg and fruit a day, is not that you eat 5 fruit and veg, but rather that you get the various goodies contained within those fruit and veg. No point getting too hung up on definitions, if something that isn't strictly speaking either a fruit or veg nonetheless offers the same goodies as peas and apples. Nobody would deny that potatoes and other tubers and roots are a type of vegetable, but some are and some aren't included on the list. Parsnips and carrots are, potatoes aren't. They're not attempting to redefine what is or isn't a veg or fruit. They're just trying to collect together a category of intake and the imperfect designation of 5 fruit and veg a day is an easy and convenient way of doing so.