6. Tomatoes
The rich red tomatoes, which are staples of every kitchen today, were once considered poisonous. In the Europe of the 18th century, it was almost taken as a fact that people die after eating this fruit. It was notoriously given the name of “the poison apple.” However, the bad reputation the fruit earned was not because it had some hazardous chemical makeup at that time or was grown in wrong conditions, it was because of the tableware the aristocrats used then. Tomatoes being highly acidic caused the lead in the pewter plates to leach and ultimately effected the lead poisoning.
The tomato continued to live with the bad name until the 19th century when the popularity of pizza grew. People, then, slowly started to shed their misconceptions about the red fruit. Now, you have one more reason to celebrate the invention of pizza, don’t you?
