For two centuries, Europeans and Americans believed tomatoes were deadly poison. The bizarre story of how we went from fearing tomatoes to putting them on everything reveals more about class, chemistry, and courage than you might expect.
In 1820, standing before a courthouse in Salem, New Jersey, a man named Robert Gibbon Johnson prepared to commit what the gathered crowd believed was public suicide. He lifted a tomato to his lips and took a bite. Women fainted. Men shouted warnings. When Johnson finished the entire tomato and then another, the crowd waited for him to collapse and die. He didn't. This theatrical moment is often credited with beginning America's love affair with tomatoes, though the truth is far more complicated—and more interesting.
The tomato's reputation as a poisonous plant wasn't entirely unfounded. A member of the nightshade family along with deadly belladonna and tobacco, tomatoes do contain toxic compounds called glycoalkaloids in their leaves and stems. But the real culprit behind tomato poisoning was something entirely different: pewter plates.
Wealthy Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries served their meals on pewter flatware, which had a high lead content. Tomatoes, being highly acidic, would leach lead from the plates, causing lead poisoning in diners. The poor, eating from wooden trenchers, had no such problems with tomatoes. This class-based discrepancy meant that for centuries, tomatoes were blamed for deaths actually caused by heavy metal poisoning among the aristocracy.
Meanwhile, tomatoes thrived in Italy and Spain despite the poisoning rumors. Southern Europeans, with different dining customs and materials, recognized the tomato's potential. By the late 1700s, Italians had already developed marinara sauce and were well on their way to making tomatoes central to their cuisine. Northern Europe and America, however, remained suspicious.
Part of the problem was botanical confusion. When Spanish conquistadors brought tomatoes back from Central and South America in the 16th century, botanists classified them alongside known poisonous plants. The name itself reveals this anxiety—'tomato' comes from the Aztec 'tomatl,' but the French called them 'pommes d'amour' (love apples), while Italians called them 'pomi d'oro' (golden apples), after the yellow varieties first introduced. Germans called them 'paradiesapfel' (paradise apples). This naming chaos reflected deep uncertainty about what exactly this strange fruit was.
The British particularly distrusted tomatoes, calling them 'poison apples' well into the 1800s. Since American colonists inherited British culinary traditions, this suspicion crossed the Atlantic. Thomas Jefferson, that adventurous gastronome, grew tomatoes at Monticello as early as 1781 and ate them regularly, but he was viewed as eccentric for this habit among many other eccentricities.
Johnson's 1820 demonstration, though likely embellished over time, represented a growing movement. By the mid-1800s, tomatoes appeared in American cookbooks with increasing frequency. The Civil War accelerated acceptance—soldiers from different regions shared foods, and canned tomatoes became a military staple. By 1900, tomatoes had become thoroughly American, essential to ketchup, which had evolved from a fermented fish sauce to the sweet tomato condiment we know today.
The complete reversal took about 300 years. Today, tomatoes are the fourth most popular fresh-market vegetable (though botanically a fruit) in America. We produce millions of tons annually, and the average American eats nearly 100 pounds of tomatoes per year in various forms. From poison to pizza sauce, the tomato's journey reminds us that culinary truth often hides behind cultural fear, waiting for someone brave—or theatrical—enough to take that first bite.