While it’s hard to think of the famed Mediterranean diet without thinking of vibrantly red, ripe tomatoes, the fruit was once actually considered to be poisonous in Europe. Nicknamed the “poison apple,” tomatoes were feared for nearly two centuries, and were only embraced in the 19th century with the invention of pizza.
As a fruit, tomatoes originated in Mesoamerica as early as 700 AD. They are notably linked to the Aztecs, who referred to the fruit as “tomatl” in their native Nahuatl language. When Spanish conquistadores set out to colonize the area and its inhabitants in the 16th century, they discovered the fruit and returned home with its seeds, eventually spreading them throughout southern Europe. For a while, the tomatoes that grew from these seeds were not consumed as they had been in their native land but rather served a decorative purpose.
In the same century that tomatoes were introduced to Europe, they soon gained a reputation as poisonous, due, in part, to Italian herbalist Pietro Andrae Matthioli. He erroneously classified the tomato as Solanaceae, the plant that contains toxic tropane alkaloids and is part of the deadly nightshade family, as well as a mandrake, a group of foods considered to be aphrodisiacs. This damning misclassification followed the fruit around Europe, irrevocably tarnishing its reputation for the next 200 years.
Furthermore, in the late 17th century, Europeans linked tomatoes as the cause of death for a string of aristocrats' premature deaths. Artistrocracts preferred to eat off of ornamental pewter plates, dishes that were made from a silver-colored metal that contained high traces of lead. When aristocrats ate tomatoes off these pewter plates, they eventually got seriously ill and died, leading many to believe that the fruit was poisonous. In reality, it was their fancy serving platters that were killing them. Tomatoes’ high acidic content meant that as their juices leaked out onto their pewter plates, aristocrats were not only consuming the fruit, but also ingesting high amounts of lead, which is poisonous to humans.
It wasn’t until the 1800s with the invention of pizza in Naples that the tide against tomatoes began to turn. Tomatoes were no longer seen as poisonous, and they grew in popularity across Europe, consumed with great gusto from there on out. Now, we can’t imagine the Mediterranean diet, especially Italian cuisine, without tomatoes.
Asia London Palomba
Asia London Palomba is a trilingual freelance journalist from Rome, Italy. In the past, her work on culture, travel, and history has been published in The Boston Globe, Atlas Obscura, The Christian Science Monitor, and Grub Street, New York Magazine's food section. In her free time, Asia enjoys traveling home to Italy to spend time with family and friends, drinking Hugo Spritzes, and making her nonna's homemade cavatelli.