Upvote. I wish it was more obvious that I wasn't using food groups as a proper noun. Since he wasn't eating fruit, you can see the friction between the language of reality to the use of language in food politics. "Fruits and vegetables" are different. Compared to stems and leaves, fruits are high in sugar, low in fiber and complex carbs.
I’m going to have to plead some confusion or ignorance I here. I’m well aware that nutrition has become a political hot potato for the last few decades, but I’m trying figure out why you felt the need to bring it up in your response. What do you mean by “not food groups as a proper noun?"
Because the pyramid defines a group "fruits and vegetables". I could define any set of edible things I wanted in a small g group, but the pervasive inclination to think about "fruits and vegetables" inhibits my goal of getting people to think about them separately. Fruits are not the same as stems and leaves.
I think I see your point; when I was a kid I saw charts that handled them separately. (I think it was during Reagan’s or Clinton’s term that they got kerfuddled together.) But it doesn’t help matters that the terms “fruit” and “vegetable” are problematic, at least in English. What a layman thinks is a fruit can be drastically different than what a biologist or lawyer thinks is one, thanks to a real mess of culinary and legal tradition. (The tomato is the textbook example.)
