Since some people won’t drill down to the article, much less the embedded link in the article, I’ll just note that tomatoes were actually poisonous at one time. They got that reputation - and deserved it - because during the early Roman republic food was served on Pewter plates, occasionally simple lead. Both metals were simple to work with, melted at low temperatures, and made fine dining ware and were easily decorated.

Unfortunately the acids in tomatoes reacted with the metals and turned the tomatoes served thereon into something which would, over time, poison you. That is the reason that they acquired the reputation, and it was real, but the reputation lingered long after pewter and lead plates went out of fashion. In fact there are reports of people dying of hunger during various famines, even as wild tomatoes grew nearby in fields and forests: the reputation was so stark that nobody would touch them, and they didn’t understand the mechanism by which they had become “poison.”

Science. It’s a wonderful thing, but sometimes it doesn’t show up in time.

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