I have only a layman's interest in botany so I lack the vocabulary to describe it well. But a tomato plant has the overall structure of a datura plant, bushy, similar stalks, similar pattern. The leaves look a lot like belladonna, datura or mandrake. The flowers look like diminutive mandrake flowers. The fruit looks a lot like mandrake fruit.
If I had never heard of tomatoes, the close family resemblance would make me very reluctant to eat one.
The snakeberry (also a nightshade) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum_dulcamara -- has fruits that look almost identical to a tomato, and while not deadly... incredibly uncomfortable and bitter.
I came across these on a trek in the woods, and thought they were wild tomatoes at first. Fruit looks identical. But of course, I knew never to eat a nightshade. It's not surprising that Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous. Nightshades are no joke.
Yes, and while many people can eat them just fine, many others experience health issues when eating tomatoes or other nightshades. The connection between eating the tomatoes and the health issues is not very obvious, and many people suffer for years before figuring it out. A family member had arthritic pain which got quite a bit better when they went gluten free, but it wasn't until they got off of certain plant families that things cleared up.
Lectins can also act as antioxidants. They are deactivated by cooking. And they are present in foods that improve health outcomes. Low doses are probably good for us.
So far it seems the fear of lectins is an orthorexia related to those who use terms like toxins and antinutrients.
I love Italian food. But even though the cuisine is known for tomato sauce-based dishes, those recipes didn’t really exist until the 17-18th century regionally and 19th century in general.
Pasta was introduced to Italy earlier than tomatoes, but the toppings were pretty strange compared to today’s tastes.
Nightshade plants are funny. Apparently, repeated exposure to poison ivy can make you also react to cashews- my dad had to stop eating them for quite awhile after he'd had a few particularly bad exposures a few years in a row.
Aside from the notable tomato and potato, there's also cashew, eggplant, tobacco, chili and bell peppers, gooseberry, goji and huckleberries, and a few others.
Huckleberries are not nightshades. You are confusing the garden huckleberry (solanum nigrum) with the actual huckleberry, which is a member of the Heath family (Ericaceae). Actual huckleberries are incredibly difficult to grow and only grow on mountains. The garden huckleberry is a tomato relative that has similar looking fruits and some say a similar taste and is easier to grow. Hence the name.
Cashews are also not nightshades. Cashews are members of the cashew/mango family. All plants are highly allergenic. Many people have cashew problems, and many many people have reactions to the outer skin of the Mango. Poison Ivy is in the mango/cashew family. They are part of the Anacardiaceae family.
Gooseberries... you are thinking of the cape gooseberry. The cape gooseberry is a nightshade. Real gooseberries are members of the currant family Grossulariaceae. Gooseberries are very distinct from a cape gooseberry. The two plants are actually not very similar looking at all. Cape gooseberries, like many nightshades, grow in a husk (like a tomatillo). Real gooseberries do not.
The rest are indeed nightshades.
Sorry for the pedantry, but these are all very different plants.
> Some researchers credit Cortez with bringing the seeds to Europe in 1519 for ornamental purposes.
I really doubt they (particularly the Spaniards) weren't eating tomatoes from the start. The confusion emerged later, the premise of all Europeans thinking that tomatoes were poisonous is wrong; some of them did but others did not.
Related popular food myth: Lobsters being gross. Lobsters were known to be delicious by Mediterranean people since Roman times. The premise of lobsters being disgusting poor people food developed much later, in America, when immigrants from inland regions of Europe encountered lobsters for the first time, had no cultural background with them, and prepared them poorly.
I don't know about that, anything red looks tasty to me. When I was a kid I tried to eat holly berries before they were smacked out of my hand. Of course not all tomatoes are red, but I assume at least some varieties back then were.
I spent years pursuing a cure for chronic illness, and at one point I crossed paths with a homeopath of sorts. Among other things, she gave me a fairly strict diet, and I still remember one sentence: "No tomatoes. They're poisonous nightshades."
That’s still a thing among the folks who adhere to a paleo diet: no dairy, no nightshades, no grains, no legumes. I believe the theory is that they are all recent additions to the human diet (Neolithic) and therefore more like to cause problems.
The obvious kinship is probably best demonstrated visually.
The common tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gc5_tomatoes.jpg
The currant tomato, also edible and close wild relative of the tomato (Solanum pimpinellifolium): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Botanisk_tidsskrif...
Belladonna, toxic (Atropa belladonna): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atropa_belladonna_...
Datura, toxic (Datura stramonium): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Datura_stramonium_...
Mandrake greens and flowers, toxic (Mandragora autumnalis): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mandragora_autumna...
Mandrake fruit, toxic: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mandragora_autumna...
I have only a layman's interest in botany so I lack the vocabulary to describe it well. But a tomato plant has the overall structure of a datura plant, bushy, similar stalks, similar pattern. The leaves look a lot like belladonna, datura or mandrake. The flowers look like diminutive mandrake flowers. The fruit looks a lot like mandrake fruit.
If I had never heard of tomatoes, the close family resemblance would make me very reluctant to eat one.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae