Tomato: Fruit or Vegetable? Options

[coconutter]

It's a vegetable.

prove me otherwise?

[hi-C]

I think of it as a fruit, but it's not like you're going to take a whole tomato to school to eat as a snack. =p

I eat tomatoes as snacks. The littler ones, not the big ones. Roma tomatoes are excellent to just eat 'cos their flavor is a little more robust.

So, definitions of each term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Tomato - The glossy fleshy fruit of a solanaceous plant (Solanum Lycopersicum or Lycopersicum esculentum), a native of tropical America, now cultivated as a garden vegetable in temperate as well as tropical lands.

Fruit - The edible product of a plant or tree, consisting of the seed and its envelope, esp. the latter when it is of a juicy pulpy nature, as in the apple, orange, plum, etc.

Vegetable - A plant cultivated for food; esp. an edible herb or root used for human consumption and commonly eaten, either cooked or raw, with meat or other article of food.

Also, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia:

There is no clear botanical distinction between vegetables and fruits. Most vegetables consist largely of water, making them low in calories. They are excellent sources of fiber, vitamins A and C, potassium, calcium, and iron.

Therefore, the difference between a fruit and a vegetable seems to be the latter's link to commodification (see the italicized part in the definition of vegetable).