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“Vegetable”: verdura vs. vegetal
My understanding is that they can both refer to “vegetables.” But verduras also translates into “greens.” So what’s the difference?
Could it be that vegetales can also refer to “non-green” vegetables such as potatoes, mushrooms and (non-green) beans?
Verduras is a tiny subset of vegetales. Think of them as canidae (dogs, wolves, etc) and animals. In other words, all verduras are vegetales, but not all vegetales are verduras.
Vegetales is a type of organisms, as are animals, bacteriae, fungi, etc. You would say something has an origen vegetal when it was made from some kind of plant, such as olive oil, for example.
Verduras is a subtype, mostly something you can eat which is green colored. But not all vegetales you can eat are verduras.