Well everyone who's eaten a tomato has either: A) already died or B) is going to die
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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if you eat unripe ones, they are technically poisonous. thats probably because most other nightshades are poisonous, the berries look other poisonous nightshade. potato berries, green potatoes,,etc.
*europeans.
People in the americas had been eating them for a long ass time by the time the Columbian exchange happened
Not just Europeans, from the article: "As Andrew F. Smith details in his 1994 book The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture and Cookery, before the fruit made its way to the table in North America, it was classified as a deadly nightshade"
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.
Still is, so are tators.
And peppers and eggplant and tobacco and datura.
"God damn, this eggplant tastes horrible. Maybe if I add more salt ... !"
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.
This is also the origin of “saved by the bell”, if I’m not mistaken.
I'm too lazy to make the meme, myself, so imagine an image of Zack Morris looking confused, and the text, "I thought it came from boxing?"
Led = past tense of lead
Is it? I am dumb forgot that one, too much leaded something perhaps. There is an epidemic of lead deficiency, but no one led us to any curative solutions sadly.
Tomatoes are nightshades and contain solanine. They weren't wrong.
Yeah, but potatoes are the real killers. Much more solanine.
so true. they are so deadly that even less than 1 potato can wipe out the population of Ireland
Yes, they are a blight.
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!"
You mean starvation. Historically starvation is how they learned what will and wont kill.
Apparently, there is one type of highly poisonous mushroom that is fucking delicious. Then you die horribly.
Well, the plants are.
They are in the nightshade family, so makes sense with no other context
Tomatoes do, in fact, cause issues with arthritis in many forms. One of my folks has gout, which is an issue to do with sugar and carb consumption.
As someone with gout, I can say that eliminating carbs and red meat and going ketogenic did not relieve the gout. I'm on a prescription med, Allopurinol, to keep my uric acid down. Also, this issue started 10 years ago, when I was 50, so it wasn't a problem for most of my life, when I ate a normal amount of carbs and red meat. So, there's an age and probably genetic factor too, since most people eat carbs and red meat their entire lives and do not get gout. So far, no one knows why uric acid spikes in some people and not others.
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.
It is toxic if you cooked in a copper pot because of its acidity, which a lot of people had.
Copper might do it too, I read about pewter, which is a lead alloy. Copper poisoning is serious business too. Telltale signs are green rings around the eyes. It fucks with your reproductive organs amongst other things, in a non fucking sort of way if I recall.
The tomato weren't poisinous, but the lead plate they used to serve them were. This is also the reason for the tomato scene in lotr. They are implying denethor is crazy.
Huh. Did not know that.