Botany aside, and hopefully more in the spirit of the OP, a tomato is dead when it stops doing what a tomato is supposed to do.
A botanist might say it dies when it decomposes and all its seeds are either dead or sprouted. A cook will say it dies when it rots (or gets eaten). As supermarket owner will say it dies when it becomes unsaleable.
Lakai, (and I am not trying to pick a fight here) are you building a counter attack against vegetarians? Just curious.
“You clearly haven’t read anything I posted”
Actually, I’ve read everything you’ve posted and I’ve agreed with most of it. You just seem too be taking this much too seriously.
"Even fruit picked with 30 - 60% colour "
That is considered green by tomato growers. Why not totally green? There is no guarantee that a too green tomato will ripen at all. Especially, on it’s own.
Besides, you did say a ripe tomato would last for SEVERAL WEEKS. Not even in the fridge will ripe tomato be good for several weeks.
“The fruit also grows follwing harvest insofar as starches are converted to sugars and the fruit swells as a result”
That is ripening, not growing. Ripening of course being due to chemical reactions that occur when the fruit reaches maturity or morbidity
"No, it has never been friendly to people posting ignarant and erroneous material in GQ. "
I’m ignarant.
yeah, okay
The dope has never been friendly in it’s attempt to fight ignorance? Really? I always thought honey attracted more flies than vinegar, but you know best apparently.
“What you have posted is provably wrong and I have pointed that out.”
That’s still debatable and a lot of it is off topic. So, why bother?
You’ve made a few mistakes yourself but I hate nitpicking someone when it’s simply unnecessary and mean spirited as well.
So, how about an answer to the OP? Are you now arguing for or against a death sentence for tomatoes? I have clearly stated that a tomato does not compare and thus a pronounced statement of death is null and void. You appear to be arguing against practically everything I’ve said thus far. So have you changed your position?
Are you now prepared to recognize the sentience existence and right to life of our beloved tomato brothers?
Come on now, that was funny. 
I actually thought this OP was about the tomato commercial when I first saw it. Am I the only one who made that connection? Anyone even recall the commercial I’m referring to?
Sorry Blake if I offended. I simply asked where your sense of humor was. Thus the question mark? You on the other hand. Well… just forget it.
I’d still like to think Cecil’s gang has a good heart.
~later
No, what happened was that someone told me eating live food is much more healthier than eating dead food and told me to eat a tomato. I told them that a tomato is dead unless I eat it off a tree. They said something about tomatoes not growing on trees and here I am.
Hilarity N. Suze, that was very clever.
Well, in that sense, an edible ripe tomato certainly does contain live cells.
I’m not sure how many live cells remain in a piece of meat after the animal is killed. I’m sure there’s some sort of curve.
The problem comes because plants aren’t–or rather, don’t have to be–individuals in the same sense most humans are. And I say “most” because even humans can have blurry individuality. We can have identical twins sharing exactly the same genes, babies cloned from adult cells, conjoined twins with two functioning brains, conjoined twins with one functioning brain, chimeras where one person has two genetically distinct cell lines (that is, fraternal twin embryos fuse to create one fetus), brain dead people that still have a heartbeat, fetuses with almost no brain function, embryos with no brain, live tissue cultures that can continue to live after the tissue donor is dead. And so on.
Our sense is that a person has to have a functioning brain to be alive. Identical twins are two people, conjoined twins with two heads are two people, conjoined twins with one head is one person, a brain dead person is dead, a live tissue culture is not a live person.
Except most plants and many animals don’t work this way, because they don’t have brains or nervous systems. Cut a starfish in half and each half grows into a new starfish. Put a sponge through a seive and each cell will grow into a new sponge. And in plants this is even more common. Many plants grow asexually. A grass seed lands in some dirt and grows into a blade of grass. The blade of grass sends out rhizomes and the rhizomes sprout into new blades. Is each blade of grass a grass individual, or is the whole unit of genetically identical grass one individual? What about if I take a shovel and cut out a piece of sod and move it to another lawn? Have I created a new individual of grass? What about when rhizomes from two genetic individuals connect, and the plants share a root system despite having formerly been distinct? And as Blake points out, there are many plants where you can chop the plant up in a blender, smear the paste on a growing medium, and have millions of baby plants spring up.
So our ideas about life starting and ending don’t apply so easily to plants, where asexual and vegetative reproduction are as common as sexual reproduction, where plants can be chopped in half and each half continues to function, where you can chop a tree down and suckers will grow from the roots.
And fruits are plant parts that are in many cases designed to live after being detached from the main plant, even though the cells in the fruit don’t typically grow into a new plant, the seeds in the fruit do, but still those living fruit cells could grow into a new plant given the correct growing medium.
I’m glad you kept it. That should be spotlighted as Post of the Week.
In many fruits, tomatoes included (I think), the fruit is more or less cut off from the vascular system of the plant before it is fully ripe - the stalk develops corky tissues that close off the vessels and provide a breaking point so that the fruit can be detached without damaging the plant. So a tomato that has just been picked, or indeed one that was picked last week, is more or less as ‘alive’ (or not) as one that is nearly ripe on the plant.
Where there is respiration, there is life:
No, it isn’t.
you are now being wilfully ignorant. I just posted a reputable scientific article debunking this nonsense. Fully coloured tomatoes remain perfectly marketable for over two weeks even at standard temperatures. You are simply repeating the same ignorant nonsense that has now been thoroughly debunked.
No, it is growing.
As I already pointed out, you never offended me. On the other hand you appear to have taken umbrage at me returning precisely the same comment to you.
Okay, this one is serious. It hasn’t much to do with whether a tomato is “live food” or “raw” but they begin to lose taste when stored below approx. 50 degrees F, so they should not be stored in the refrigerator, and if growing should be picked when the temp begins to fall below that at night.
Crap! I linked to the page on Beet storage.
Here’s the correct link: The Commercial Storage of Fruits, Vegetables: Tomatoes
The commercial growers know this, and store at moderate temp. in a controlled atmosphere. See link for details; the proper conditions depend on ripeness.