Talk:Vegetable/@comment-24103176-20140424115146/@comment-184.187.170.57-20140512122241

To answer your question, I don't think anybody can point to a specific criteria. I imagine some dev decides and that's it. Whatever criteria he based it on is what was used for that item. But some other dev might come up with a different criteria for the items he's tasked to make. Or the same dev might use totally different reasoning for some other item. I seriously doubt it is a fixed thing like you are asking for. But I could be wrong.

The Crock Pot distinguishes between veggie and fruit but the rest of the game seems to differentiate only between animal matter and plant matter...and mineral matter I suppose. It refers to animal matter as meat and plant matter as vegetable, tho vegetation may have been a clearer more general terminology to choose IMO considering how the Crock Pot subdivides and names things. The Crock Pot splits crockable vegetation into vegetables and fruits at least, and maybe one could say into dairy and herbs to some small degree also, tho it is never specifically called out or tagged that way anywhere I've seen. I conclude the grains, molds, and funguses are treated simply as vegetables.

IRL most things you pluck from large bushes and trees are fruits, most veggies have to be dug up or picked from small low bushes or ground cover. Of course there are a few exceptions there also. Like tomatoes grow on a pretty large bush but are considered vegetables not fruits. Corn comes off a big bush but it's considered a grain which typically comes from grasses and flowers. So do herbs but they come from leaves and roots too. Then there are strawberries which are harvested from ground cover yet are a fruit I believe. Beans are a vegetable that grow on a vine, blackberries are a fruit that grow on a vine. Can't think of a fruit you have to dig up off the top of my head...so maybe that's a fair methodology to go by. At least you can say "If you have to dig it up, its not a fruit". Of course in this game sometimes you have to dig up the carrots and other times they grow on bushes so....

A gentleman scientist trapped in a bizarre magical alien world might use such reasoning to conclude Berries and Light Bulbs are fruits based on how you harvest them...or concede that a Tallbird might lay a vegetable and meat can grow on plants. But really Light Bulbs seem most like Flowers to me. Glow Berries would have to be a meat because they are animal matter (a poorly named item is the problem there really). Likewise with Butterfly Wings, Eggs (if there is to be no dairy split off), and Fireflies and the like. Honey is clearly the toughest one to categorize, being comprised of a mix of both plant and animal matter harvested from a dead comb built from a combo of plant, animal, and mineral matter. I've always thought of it as a kind of secretion and so I tend to lean towards animal matter.

Something I'm sort of surprised they don't have at all is water, milk, and juices. Thirst is a major component of survival and liquids are a main source of nutrition. It fits the game too well to leave it out in my view. There should be an icon for it right up there with the hunger one.