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.
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*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 … !”