Tomatoes Were Feared as Poison for 200 Years

When the tomato first arrived in Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, it was met with suspicion rather than appetite. As a member of the nightshade family, its resemblance to toxic relatives like belladonna was enough to earn it a place in ornamental gardens rather than on dinner tables. For generations, it was cultivated primarily as a curious decorative plant, with its vibrant red fruit (Review), then called a "poison apple," admired for its beauty but widely considered inedible and dangerous.

The fruit’s sinister reputation was cemented by a deadly misunderstanding involving class and chemistry. Wealthy aristocrats, who could afford plates made of pewter, were the primary group reporting sickness and death after consuming tomatoes. The issue wasn't the fruit itself, but the tableware. Pewter of that era had a high lead content, and the tomato's natural acidity would leach the toxic (Review) metal directly from the plate into the food. When these diners fell ill from what we now recognize as lead poisoning, the vibrant, foreign fruit was wrongly identified as the culprit. Meanwhile, poorer populations who ate off wooden plates or consumed the fruit plain experienced no ill effects, a fact that helped the tomato eventually shed its poisonous persona and become a culinary staple.