TIL at one time, people thought that tomatoes were poisonous.
TIL at one time, people thought that tomatoes were poisonous.
*europeans.
People in the americas had been eating them for a long ass time by the time the Columbian exchange happened
According to the tomatoes Wikipedia article, tomatoes were definitely domesticated and eaten by indigenous folk in the americas by 500 BC.
My point is that the people who domesticated the tomato never feared it. Europeans propagated the myth that it was harmful and people who’d been eating it for millennia never took that seriously.
That is because they ate out of pewter, a lead alloy, and the acidity of tomatoes leeched lead out into the food.
This often lead to lead comas, and people were thought to be dead and then buried. They for some reason dug some up and found claw marks on the inside of their coffins, and started to attach a string connected to a bell on the surface.
Another factor I didn’t mention would be potentially GMOs. Eating red meat is actually a requirement for the homo sapien body, and had been since our brains got bigger.
The smaller your brain, the more carbs you need. The bigger your brain, the more protein + healthy fat you need.
The lengths someone has needed to go to find out whether something is edible, not poisonous, etc…
“Damn, Mike boiled these mushrooms once and died. What if I boil them once more? Hmm, tastes okay. And I didn’t even die!”