Does anyone really say that a marshmallow is a vegetable? I've heard that, and the rationale is because they are made from a mallow plant. Well, duh, plant-derived doesn't mean vegetable unless you are playing "animal, vegetable, or mineral." After all, sugar is plant-derived. It's a joke for someone who wants to justify eating marshmallows. But the truth is that commercially available marshmallows are no longer made from the mallow plant, and not only are they not vegetables, they aren't even vegetarian.
So what is a marshmallow? Believe it or not, a couple of thousand years ago, they were a remedy for all kinds of ailments (or maybe that was just an excuse to eat them). Today they hold your Rice Krispy Treats together. There's a lot of history in between, as Tom Blank of Weird History Food explains. We also learn what's in a marshmallow, how they are made, and what they can do to your body.
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Vegetarian and vegan marshmallows are available. FYI the marshmallow stuff in some Ben & Jerry's ice creams are kosher, vegetarian. No animal products.
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Writing this simple post was difficult because of the difference between "marshmallow" and "a marshmallow." A marshmallow is a discrete unit, so you use the pronoun "they" for a plural and "fewer" for an amount. Marshmallow without the article is a material and can exist in any amount, so you use "it" and "less." I'm still not sure I got it all right. Thus are the travails of a writer with no specific training who can't even type properly.
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