the wombatcave

What bewilders me about this genre of recipes is what makes them salads? Is it the nominal presence of canned fruit, or is it just that any cold, moist food = salad? (Cf. tuna salad, chicken salad, macaroni salad, etc.; but also another recipe I recall seeing along the lines of "stained glass salad": several different colors of jello chopped into chunks and embedded within a matrix of Miracle Whip or ice cream, depending.)