Scientists and nutritionists continue to argue over what constitutes a vegetable. Strictly speaking, a vegetable is any part of a herbaceous plant eaten by humans as food. So, in this sense, lettuce leaves are vegetables, asparagus is a vegetable, carrots are a vegetable, as are garlic, peas and beans, squash, peppers and tomatoes. Tomatoes, however are also consider fruits under the botanical definition and under the legal definition. For the purposes of this discussion, botanical and culinary fruits such as green peppers or pumpkins and nuts, herbs, seeds, and grains and fungi such as mushrooms will be ignored to focus on culinary vegetables.