1. The word "vegetable" comes from a Latin word meaning "to enliven." The term originates from the Latin word vegetabilis, which comes from vegetare (meaning "to enliven," "grow," or "quickened"). It originally referred to any living plant that grows and thrives!

2. Botanically speaking, many popular "vegetables" are actually fruits! In botany, a fruit develops from the flower of a plant and contains seeds. That means tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, eggplants, bell peppers, and green beans are technically fruits, while true vegetables are edible roots, stems, leaves, or flower buds!

3. Carrots were originally purple and yellow instead of orange. Thousands of years ago in Central Asia, cultivated carrots were dark purple or yellow! Dutch growers in the 17th century selectively bred sweet yellow and red carrot varieties together to produce the bright orange carrots filled with beta-carotene that we eat today.

4. Chlorophyll gives green vegetables their color and powers photosynthesis. Green vegetables like spinach, broccoli, and kale get their vibrant color from a pigment called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll molecules absorb sunlight energy and convert carbon dioxide (CO2​) and water into plant sugars during photosynthesis!

5. Onions make you cry by releasing a sulfur compound that turns into acid. When you slice into an onion, you rupture its plant cells, mixing enzymes that produce a volatile gas called propanethial s-oxide. When this gas floats up and touches the water in your eyes, it breaks down into mild sulfuric acid, triggering your tear ducts to flush it out!

6. Potatoes were the very first vegetable grown in outer space! In 1995, NASA scientists teamed up with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to test growing plants in microgravity. They successfully grew tiny Quantum Potato plants aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, proving fresh food could be farmed on long space missions!

7. Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and cabbage are all the exact same plant species. Despite looking and tasting so different, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and kohlrabi are all selective breeding variations of a single wild mustard plant species called Brassica oleracea!