It’s crazy that 200 years ago, the main ingredient to many national cuisines (like Italy’s), wasn’t considered edible

Especially when you consider what people did choose to eat. Like what inspired someone to sample the partially curdled milk in a dead goat or whatever and replicate it as yogurt!

Also the fact that they're not indigenous to Italy in the first place.

> By the late 1700s that had radically changed — people feared to eat tomatoes as the fruit had gained a reputation as being poisonous. The unusual culprit was actually tableware. It turned out the pewter plates of the wealthy contained significantly high lead content. The acid in tomatoes brought out this poison and people succumbed.

I'm always amazed at how wide spread the use of lead in food and water was considering knowledge of lead poisoning was known as far back as 200 BC.

> considering knowledge of lead poisoning was known as far back as 200 BC.

Certainly could have been known in pockets, but the manufacturing of general goods and the spreading of information was not like it is today - or even 100 years ago. Could be a combination of feasibility and the universally unknown that caused the continued usage to be widespread.

You're saying the benefits of lead were widely known but not the issues? That makes no sense.

That's not even close to what I posted. Please re-read. Thanks

People didn't just randomly add lead to their products. They added lead for specific desired results (e.g. adding lead to gasoline was to reduce knock). So the beneficial properties of lead were well known but, it appears, you're saying the problems with lead were not. If that is not your point, please rephrase.

I remember my grandmother telling me that when she was a kid in Poland (circa 192x), Jews wouldn’t eat tomatoes because they thought they were full of blood.

I realize most people here have adblockers turned on, but it's dystopian what this article looks like without it.

It's literally a paragraph per full horizontal banner. Not to mention the side banners.

I almost feel like this submission should be discarded just for that.