Olives

So, I was making dinner (cheese enchiladas, spanish rice, and refried beans), when I got to thinking about whether olives were a fruit or vegetable. I did some looking around the internet, and here's what I found:

• From a purely scientific perspective, olives are technically a fruit because they are ripened ovaries and seeds of plants.
• From a culinary perspective, olives are more like a vegetable; they probably wouldn't go well in a fruit salad, but fine in a tossed salad.
• From a nutritional perspective, olives are more like meat, at least that's the gist of what I read in a very short time; they are high in fat, salt, and protein.

It appears, then, that the answer really depends on why you want to know, much like most everything else in the world.