The tomato was feared in Europe for more than 200 years (2013) | Hacker News Reader

The tomato was feared in Europe for more than 200 years (2013)

smithsonianmag.com

162 pointsraldi182 comments

In 18th century in Astria-Hungary, there were several conspiracies about the potatoes as a weapon of rich to poison and kill the poor. Funny fact, our ancestors were fighting againts potatoes 300years ago and now we celebrate this ingredient in national dishes as a cultural heritage.

Btw similar revolts could be found in many government/kingdom actions f.e. to fight cholera or plagues of that time. Peasants didn't understand the actions and expected bad things to come instead.

I wonder how long on average something becomes heritage. 100 years ? is it n generation ? after 5 generation, your grandmother's grandmother was born there so you're 99% from her culture (all your siblings are, you and their memories are)

Most recipes have only standardized in the last 100 years or so. We didn't have exact temperature controls on ovens or stoves until the 1930s, which is a fairly easy way to tell, and even cooking units vary across time, place, and even household. (How big is a teacup? Depends on your glassware.)

I remember one noble solved this in a clever way. He made it illegal for peasants to grow potatoes, and grew them in the his royal garden. Then peasants would smuggle them out in the night and grow them back home, thinking if it was forbidden it must be good.

https://satwcomic.com/can-t-touch-that

That's attributed to Friedrich II, king of Prussia, however might just be legend:

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartoffelbefehl

This legend or similar exist throughout European countries. I am not sure how based in reality they are, but there must be fragments of truth, or common approaches that were later exaggerated.

Potatoes and Tomatoes are very similar plants. You can graft them together and have a living plant that grows tomatoes on top and potatoes in the roots.

Potatoes also produce fruits that are similar to cherry tomatoes. They taste like gross tomatoes and are indeed poisonous in relatively small quantities.

> Potatoes and Tomatoes are very similar plants. You can graft them together and have a living plant that grows tomatoes on top and potatoes in the roots.

It's true that they're similar plants, but that's not a requirement of grafting.

It kind of is, though.

Grafting specimens of the same species is fairly easy - grafting onto a different species but staying in the same genus is a little less reliable but the basis of most grafted orchard trees.

Grafting to a different genus, but within the same family, is much more challenging. Not impossible, of course, but less likely to succeed, so less commonly done.

You can do something similar with hops and marijuana…so I’ve heard

> Peasants didn't understand the actions and expected bad things to come instead.

lets not make it sound like peasants were stupid vs the enlightened elite. most governments in History were utterly bad at managing anything, no matter whether the high borns were in power or not.

> most governments in History were utterly bad at managing anything

s/were/are

The article seems to gloss over that tomatoe plants look very similar to the closely related poisonous nightshade plants.

See pics [1] and [2], could you definitively differentiate between these two plants in the wild? Now consider if you removed the hundreds of years of selective breeding of tomatoes that has led to them looking the way we imagine them. Think of something like an heirloom tomato that can be a variety of shapes and colors, and without modern agricultural advancements, the fruits are smaller too. I bet that some of those tomatoes looked pretty damn similar to its poisonous cousin. On top of that, at BEST you have access to an old drawing someone made of a tomato plant, and probably a different variety than the one you're looking at. I'm speculating a fair bit here, but at least superficially it doesn't seem that crazy that your average seventeenth century European person wouldn't want to risk their lives on correctly identifying a tomato vs. a nearly identical, toxic garden weed.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum_nigrum#/media/File%3...

[2] https://c8.alamy.com/comp/K6WXHY/tomato-plant-growth-sequenc...

Also, maybe it's just me, but tomato plants smell bad. Personally, I can barely stand to be around even one plant, let alone a small garden of them. Smell is one of the most evocotive senses. A bad smell is almost always a sign of danger.

I don't have the same problem with the smell, but maybe if enough people thought it smelled bad everybody else would think to avoid it.

That allmost sounds like a evolutionary survival strategy.

I absolutely love the smell of tomato plants. My grandfather used to grow them in large green houses. Now when I smell a tomato plant it reminds me of walking into those hot hunting greenhouses and being surrounded by ripe tomatoes everywhere

I like it too, I tend to get vine tomatoes because they smell of the plants a little bit :)

Don’t cannabis plants stink? People have been cultivating them forever.

But it's the fruit which is poisonous; which looks nothing like a tomato? (Except perhaps while both are small and unripe.)

New world crops were a major change and had serious economic implications for northern Europe. Given how peasents were treated at the time I can understand anxiety.

Raw potatoes might be mildly toxic from my personal experience ... or maybe I'm allergic.

Why did you bite a raw potato? Did you wash and peel it first, at least?

The plants that potato evolved from were toxic and people would soak them in a mix of clay and water to remove the toxicity. Eventually less poisonous varieties were created. Potatoes still produce toxins as a defence mechanism when exposed to light or late blight.

There is a story, which may be apocryphal, that in the late 16th century Sir Walter Raleigh brought potatoes into the gardens and court of Queen Elizabeth.

Once they'd grown and were harvested, the cooks having no familiarity with the plant, promptly discarded the tubers, and instead used the stalks & leaves in various dishes.

As a result, at a banquet featuring this wonderful new plant, everyone was violently ill, resulting in the potato being banned from the court.

My dads grandma would still refer to tomato as "food for pigs".

My grandfather considered all green vegetables cow feed.

Your grandfather only ate grains and things that eat grains.

Yes, meat, but not so much grains as potatoes.

I'll never forget when I was 6 or so and visiting my grandparents.

My grandma had decided to do something wild and new and had made one of those newfangled frozen pizzas for dinner, kids loved those she'd read.

So we sat down, each getting a slice, and then she serves my grandfather a small plate with three cooked potatoes on it...

I ask what's the potatoes are for.

"It's not dinner if there's no potatoes".

And with that, he ate pizza with potatoes.

> "It's not dinner if there's no potatoes".

This is mostly anecdotal, but I've had something similar happen in Nicaragua. Most of my acquaintances and friends don't consider pizza a "meal". It is considered by most only a side dish, because it doesn't come served with rice

In my youth my parents always served pizza with baked potatoes and coleslaw. I think there was definitely this general idea that pizza wasn't a meal in and of itself.

It's a common attitude in various countries in Asia if you haven't eaten rice you haven't had a meal. Also common, if there's no soup something is missing.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. My grandfather was the same way. He slowly changed ways after retirement.

My great uncle used to tell me stories about how he wasn't allowed to eat tomatoes growing up in Massachusetts during the Great Depression. Only Italian immigrants ate them and everyone else thought they were crazy and were slowly poisoning themselves. It's amazing to think how this New World vegetable (fruit?) was (eventually) introduced into American cuisine via Italy.

A new thought: you'd think people back then would just see that it was safe because Italians were eating it and not dying. But then again we seem to still live in an age where facts about what things are safe to take are still under siege.

Counterpoint: people back then saw people chain-smoke cigarettes all day long with no apparent ill effect.

Not really true. The harm from tobacco has been known for centuries. Epidemiology didn’t mature enough as a science to provide good evidence for harm until the 1950s.

> In 1602 an anonymous English author published an essay titled Worke of Chimney Sweepers (sic) which stated that illnesses often seen in chimney sweepers were caused by soot and that tobacco may have similar effects. This was one of the earliest known instances of smoking being linked to ill health.

> In 1795 Sammuel Thomas von Soemmering of Maine (Germany) reported that he was becoming more aware of cancers of the lip in pipe smokers

> In 1798 the US physician Benjamin Rush wrote on the medical dangers of tobacco

You’ll have to forgive me for being skeptical that these 3 obscure sources that you needed a search engine to find were common knowledge among regular Joes in Massachusetts during the Great Depression

The dangers of tobacco were known centuries before the Great Depression. This is well known and has been covered extensively by historical works on the subject.

Closer to home, within the twentieth century, Max MacLevy’s book "Tobacco Habit Easily Conquered” (1916) was well known, as was Louis L. Krauss’ "Tobacco Mysteries Exposed and Habit Conquered” (1917).

Krauss lists the available evidence as to the known dangers of tobacco for almost 100 pages. This was in 1917. We also know that the public was exposed to much of the information in Krauss’ book. I haven’t even brought up the Germans.

Any cursory review of the the history and harm of tobacco shows this is true. Your counterargument is just wrong, and given its latest iteration, has now devolved into no true Scotsman.

Kava is the national drink of Fiji. It's been consumed across the Pacific Islands for 3000 years. It's currently banned in Europe, and the US FDA refuses to give it GRAS (Generally Recognised as Safe) despite it being an ancient food of a US state).

It's not blanket-banned in Europe (or the EU). It's generally not permitted in pharmaceutical products, some countries restrict its commercial sale.

AFAIK the only exception is Poland.

> It's generally not permitted in pharmaceutical products, some countries restrict its commercial sale

It's never been acceptable as food. Only as a mislabelled pharmaceutical product. That ended in 2002 after some nonsense in Germany.

Hm, seems like you're right, all sources are foreign and selling is indeed more widely restricted than I thought.

just to point out, this wasn't a dig at veggies. My dads grandma still used tomatoes and ate them, but probably the "food for pigs" was still a "strong meme" at the end of 19th century in central Istria. The part of Istria, todays Croatia, I'm taking about was then owned by Austrian dukes and not Italy like coastline, which might explain later adoption of "New World" based cousine.

No wonder, those things are vicious!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txfdGlxEsG8

My friends in Switzerland 30 years ago thought corn was only for animals. It took some convincing for them to try American-style corn on the cob (which is delicious!)

This happened to me with an older Dutch friend. It took a while to figure out why he would never eat corn tortillas or corn pupusas while in Central America. It was until some months later they told me they considered corn as animal food and didn't want to taste it.

Do you think he would try Cui in Peru? I ate a head, the thing is definitely a rat. That is part of the adventure! :)

Edit: probably not a good idea to eat rat at home. Or tortillas. Or anything delicious that is culturally forbidden.

Cuy is guinea pig, not rat, but I hear you on the rodent flavor. Worth it once for the experience but I wouldn’t eat it a second time!

I've tasted most animal food I've come across just out of curiosity. :P

Dent corn vs. sweet corn. One of these is good for animals, while the other is great with butter.

Both are fine. I resent the idea that one of them is simply animal feed.

If you don't know what you're doing, it's easy to luck into tasty sweet corn. If you don't (read: Europeans, historically) you're likely to give your peasants pellagra.

As a taco/tamale/posole/hominy fan, I agree with you and am ashamed of my insinuation. I'll strive to do better.

Pumpkin is for pigs, in some countries. Turnips for sheep, in others.

There is not just one type of corn on Earth

Fact check needed, but doesn't 'corn' mean '[primary]staple', officially? So what Americans call 'corn' is technically Maize, according to that view. Somewhere else the 'corn' could be rice -- again on that view.

Edit: [1].definition#3> a cereal grass that is the primary crop of a region (such as wheat in Britain and oats in Scotland and Ireland)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corn

An Austrian friend of mine had a story about how he went back home and, during the visit, made polenta, and an older relative became horrified. Marshall Plan corn meal was something they were forced to eat (from lack of anything else) during the years just after WW2, and it brought back memories.

Italians will still fear pineapple 200 years from now.

Camorra closes ranks on pineapple panuozzo ...

In One River by Wade Davis, Tim Plowman is talking about the tropane alkaloids present in some of the Solanaceae family and relates:

"My grandmother would never eat tomatoes. She said they were the devil’s fruit, that we only thought they could be eaten, and that eventually everyone who ate them would be cursed.”

Everyone who eats a tomato does eventually die.

Sounds like the dread tomato addiction. http://vintage.failed-dam.org/tomato.htm

>Around 1880, with the invention of the pizza in Naples, the tomato grew widespread in popularity in Europe.

The most interesting part for me, was that Pizza was invented in ~1900? That is relatively new.

Eh, the modern-ish notion (tomato sauce and cheese topping) of pizza maybe. Topped flatbreads called pizza are much older, and topped flatbreads in general are again much older than that.

If you draw comparisons to say, tortillas(i do), they go way, way back, at least 12k years if wiki is to be believed.

Grain that's ground, mixed with water and cooked is definitely one of the earliest processed foods humans created. Easily 10's of thousands of years old. The entire agricultural revolution occurred because humans wanted to farm grains; some historians say to make beer, but whether beer or bread came first both are connected (both are basically just water + grain + yeast + heat).

Don’t forget the salt!

Seems like salt was only invented 8000 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt

That seems basically impossible. Salt is really easy to find many places, its taste is _very_ obvious, and it's insanely useful (preserving food).

I'd buy that we don't have great _evidence_ of its harvesting before that, which seems more like what the article says? But that's not really the same thing at all.

Invented?!

Let me tell you about when Hydrogen was invented 13 Billion years ago.

Do we have archeological records of this prior to development of language?

Seems like a fairly complex tech to pass on without some fairly involved language?

It is widely agreed that the development of language goes back at least 50k-150k years ago, so way before that time period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

Just a margin of error of 100k years. Not bad.

Language, or the beginnings of it, is probably older than bread. But bread in its simplest form is not complex at all, I feel like you could hypothetically teach it to an early hominid without language. Just pound something starchy into a paste, maybe add some water and work it into a dough and cook it on some rocks.

I've heard reports of orangutans learning how to fish with a spear by observing humans.

I wonder sometimes if we could teach them to make bread or baked plantains or something, idk, and then have that habit passed on to their offspring.

The sticking point could be fire, seems rather hard to make, and even worse - maintain, without all the convenient tools we have today.

> I've heard reports of orangutans learning how to fish with a spear by observing humans.

They imitate the behavior, and you can easily find some pretty cool pictures of it. However, I'm not sure an orangutan has ever actually caught a fish that way.

We have archaeological records of bread prior to written records (archaeologists found a 14k year old fragment of bread) but language itself likely developed long, long before writing.

Yes, it's quite recent.

Beyond that it's also quite interesting to think that all dishes made with potatoes, tomatoes, chilli peppers, sweet corn, cocoa did not exist before the settlement of the Americas by Europeans (at least outside of the Americas). This is a profound change in diet in Europe and throughout the world.

I remember an amusing (too me) picture, Pakistanis on a tractor in a field of pumpkins.

Are you sure they weren’t “lauki” or some local squash?

What makes it mindblowing to me is imagining Indian or Korean food without chilis.

Related fascinating topic: the oldest known cookbook in Korean was written by a woman and contains no gochujang since it was only becoming available while it was written: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/first-korean-cookbook

Yes. Before that Northern Europe was stuck with Swede and Turnip as a staple. Potatoes reduced the resources needed to feed people which was a factor in the industrial revolution. Suddenly you had a cheap, storable, filling food that was ridiculously productive.

JFYI, the "official" date is 1889.

It was in occasion of the visit of the King (and Queen) of the recently formed Kingdom of Italy to Naples.

The first pizza (pizza Margherita, so later named after the name of the Queen) "novelty" was not the tomato in itself, but rather the tomato together with mozzarella cheese and basil, as symbols of the three colours of the Italian flag, white, red and green.

Too bad that it is nothing but a story, pizza, including a version with these same toppings existed at least since some 100 years before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Margherita

though it was not particularly common, because the mozzarella cheese was costly even then.

Plainer pizzas (called by different names), with just tomato or only garlic and oil were common not only in Naples, with the exception of the cheese all ingredients (flour, water, tomato, garlic, olive oil) were ubiquitous and cheap not only in southern Italy, but all aroud the Mediterranean Sea.

The modern idea of pizza, yes. Flat breads with toppings? Likely thousands of years old.

Tomatos were likely introduced to Europeans by the Aztecs in the 1500s. Is 300yrs a long time for them becoming a local staple in Italy?

The tradition is old, the out of context form is new.

Ancient soldiers (for example) found it practical to use flatbread as a dish to eat its topping, then the dish itself. The origin of the tradition is in the need for a dish, and in the advantage of not wasting the remainders that savour the dish itself, when edible.

Thank you for the additional context.

>In Genesis, the mandrake is used as a love potion

Is this directly in Genesis, or is this a theory? I don't see anything in Genesis directly saying the mandrakes were used for a love potion.

200 years later, not much has changed. Kava is a food consumed for thousands of years across the Pacific Islands. It's the national drink of Fiji.

Kava is banned in Europe today.

Related: when Peter The Great introduced potatoes to Russia (from Holland IIRC), he forgot to tell the peasants what parts were edible, and the peasants ate the poisonous above-ground bits. Looking at the comments, seems like he wasn't the only one to do this. :-)

Ha people thought of them the same as deadly nightshades because of how it become poison while reacting with their plates!

Makes me wonder if we can similarly make deadly nightshades become edible by neutralizing their toxin before or during digestion

Would be interested to hear anything from people who have experienced a food allergy or intolerance towards tomatoes, something the NHS seems very skeptical on.

I can’t eat tomatoes at all - not sure why - I love their flavor but shortly after eating them my entire digestive system hits the panic button. It doesn’t happen with other foods (at least those I eat). I tend to just avoid them now.

Edit: Thought I would add, my doc suspects it is an acid-reflux response but wasn't sure why it would be isolated to tomatoes.

Have you any allergies? Are there other foods that cause you problems?

No other foods really, no food allergies to my knowledge. I do have minor seasonal allergies to ragweed pollen though.

Do you get similar reactions to other nightshades?

Not really, I eat a lots of potatoes and enjoy eggplant now and again without issue

Nightshades can be a trigger for autoimmune issues.

I had to give up tomatoes and potatoes

Very interesting.

Without going into too much personal detail if you'd rather not, what form did the issues take?

Was your physical or mental wellbeing negatively affected until you cut them out? On whose advice did you do this?

Or, was it instead a case where you cut them out, in case a hypothetical issue developed?

Also curious to know if you have allergies or other foods that disagree... (sorry for being so nosy)

Interestingly I don’t have issues with other nightshades just tomatoes - no autoimmune issues (unless minor seasonal allergies count)

I’ve heard that about tomatoes, due to histamine/mast cell connections.

What’s the mechanism with potatoes? They seem like a mostly safe food.

https://www.mastzellaktivierung.info/downloads/foodlist/21_F...

Potatoes are not on the 'Auto Immune Protocol', which I haven't looked in to the rationale behind unfortunately and I am completely out of my field of expertise. They are categorized as nightshades, like tomatoes.

As you can see above, some lists claim potatoes are high in histamine. I think that new or green potatoes contain (glyco)alkaloids and that the 'eyes' are also not to be eaten. Sweet potato is said to be fine.

Are you sure? It has a 0 next to it in that pdf, which is supposed to be low?

Oh sorry, I pasted the wrong one, please excuse the dubious domain.

https://branchesofwellnessacupuncture.com/assets/uploads/201...

In the past few years the acidity in tomatoes has started disagreeing with me. I used to love them, but I'm getting old.

there are a few low acid tomato varieties that are still flavorful. Keep your eye out for them, they tend to be less red (or yellow/orangish).

I seem to be allergic in the context of histamine. Not as much as oranges, which can make me sneeze for the rest of the day. Using hay fever pills makes this reaction go away. I do enjoy tomatoes very much and eat them often though.

Some more info is in an article of mine. I do need to update it, because I am using a low dose of antispychotics again.

https://timelord.nl/gezondheid/biologische-hefbomen.html?lan...

Histamine apparently caused a lot of itching, which I always took for normal. Using antihistamine tablets make me stop pulling my eyebrows. I did not write that in the blogpost, there a small bit of shame involved.

Now we're talking, you've correctly surmised what I was digging for. Thanks for sharing your article, I'll have a read through it.

Here's some pseudoscience, you may also find the parent comment that it is in reply to interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27993001

Thank you, seems interesting. Down into a rabbit hole again :)

Look up MCAS and the more severe form of mast cell disease, mastocytosis, and their neuropsychological consequences.

I can't eat tomatoes, but not due to allergy or intolerance, but rather because they're the primary trigger for my somewhat severe acid reflux. Eating something that contains tomatoes guarantees a reflux episode, even under medication, and without medication will likely lead to a trip to urgent care.

It's unfortunate because I really like tomatoes. I grew up on a farm, and as a child really enjoyed a fresh ripe tomato sliced thin with the slices topped with salt and pepper, or eating thin slices of tomatoes with ham on fresh baked bread. Truly heavenly. Unfortunately also something I can never have again as long as I live.

Crazy suggestion, but have you ever tried eating for the taste without swallowing?

No. Why would I want to do that? There are many many many wonderful foods that exist in the world that don't contain tomatoes, and many recipes which contain tomatoes can be easily modified. I'm a foodie, so I don't eat just for sustenance but also for enjoyment and appreciation, so losing something as core to cuisine as tomatoes is hard, but not impossible to overcome.

Well, if you eat for enjoyment and appreciation, then there's no need to swallow for sustenance. There's always a spit bucket in the wine tasting room.

I was thinking this recently while eating chocolate; not really a big difference between spitting it out or swallowing tbh.

That IS a crazy and fascinating idea. It also sounds like an eternal punishment in Hades. I will try it later. I don't think it will work, though, because a lot of the taste of food happens during the swallow - whatever happens on the back of the tongue + aromatics getting pushed up into your nose.

I'm allergic to some specific varieties. As in full panic, my throat is closing.

Independently (or maybe not?) from that I get an insane acid reflux after eating any kind of tomato. I don't get that with other acidic foods. The pain gets so crazy I've considered calling the hospital because I thought I was going to die. Obviously I don't eat them anymore.

I'm in this weird grey zone were I mostly don't mind tomato taste and I'm not allergic to them, but it's the texture of the fruit, particularly raw, that will illicit a gag response.

That's why for example I don't mind the tomato sauce on pizza, but put whole slices of it on a burger and I will remove them before I eat it.

I am willing to bet that you never had a good tomato. A good ripe tomato is impossible to transport. So what we get in the store is full of water with this weirdly mushy texture. Feels like the tomato is stealing all other flavors in your mouth. But a tomato from a home garden. That's a totally different experience.

I have some problems digesting tomatoes (moderate acid reflux), although this happens when eating a lot of them and uncooked (no probs at all with cooked juice, pizzas etc.). But being an Italian that's not an uncommon problem. However eating them among other things helps a lot, as does taking enough time to digest them before taking a nap or sleeping. For that matter I tend to avoid them at dinner unless I'm sure I won't go to bed for some hours. Moderate cooking significantly reduces the effects too: I never experienced any side effects by making my pizza with finely sliced green tomato, tuna, onion and mozzarella.

It’s very common, acid reflux after Italian food that’s loaded with tomatoes is basically almost expected culturally?

Tomatoes contain a lot of histamine, and can trigger mast cell degranulation, which I think should offer at least some explanation why acid reflux with tomatoes is so common. Typically reflux isn’t seen as a sign of intolerance or allergies, but seems that’s actually a sign of mild intolerance and mast stabilizers actually work better than antacids in many people.

There are people who say that all nightshades are “bad”, but I never heard anyone complain about potatoes in the same way.

I’m not sure these are true allergies, although those are probably possible. Some allergies that are very common in Europe (peach allergy/LTP syndrome) seem very rare in the US, and vice versa with peanuts.

In case of an LTP allergy, or fruit-vegetable allergy syndrome, you could trivially have people cross-react to tomatoes because LTP proteins are ubiquitous across species.

From my research into inflammation the only solid take away I had is that not a single person in the world truly understand what allergy is, and what to do with, except for rather crude tools like epinephrine and antihistamines. Even food allergy desensitization with Xolair barely works and mostly fails, and that’s the best we can come up with after 70 years of research.

You forgot steroids and mabs such as Omalizumab.

Xolair is omalizumab. it is however a very specific mab, an anti-IgE, not many others are helpful.

If we gonna go down this route, some drs rx gleevec/imatinib, and some people self-medicate with veterinary drug masitinib, which failed human trials due to liver issues but otherwise was very helpful.

Is imatinib/gleevec used as an anti-reflux medicine as well? Isn’t that a cancer drug?

It’s a TKI, yes, most frequently used in cancers, yes. However, lots of cancer medications are used in all kinds of immune/inflammatory/autoimmune diseases. Nobody in their right mind will write gleevec just for reflux, but steroids and xolair would be inappropriate for that too. On gleevec your kidney function would need to be monitored weekly at first, etc. Even if it’s appears safe for you and helps you - it’s just not worth the headache and risk just for reflux alone.

Usually it would be used in a context of some form of systemic mast cell disease, mcas or mastocytosis etc, with multiple systemic issues and insufficient response to anti-mediator therapy, which are basically h1 or h2 blockers plus aspirin, plus/minus singlulair and possibly Xolair. in addition to allergic/inflammatory-like issues such patients have all kinde of other problems, bone density loss, neuropathies, etc etc.

Some drs prefer low dose gleevec before giving chronic systemic steroids, but that seems to be a rather small minority (I only know of 2 in the US). The justification would be that instead of taking massive doses of mutilple drugs daily for life, instead you take a low dose of single agent that fixes all the problems. Seems to work for some people, and maybe in some carefully selected patients drugs like gleevec would eventually become first line agents. There are a couple of genetics groups that are working on elucidating exact pathways that seem to be disregulated, and once there is some clarity there, potentially cleaner, better targeted TKIs can be developed.

If something gives significant reflux - I’d personally avoid the trigger, or if that’s not possible, then maybe 20-40-80mg famotidine.

Allergy is funny like that. Millions walk around with undiagnosed milk allergy, and have a constantly congested or slightly runny nose, commonly attributed to anything but allergy. In reality it has often nothing to do with pollen or colds at all, and magically goes away as soon as anything milk/cheese/butter-related is eliminated.

I just feel reflux seems to be under appreciated by most allergists, who tend to rely too much on skin prick tests, and discount symptoms “oh everyone has reflux etc”, and don’t investigate history well enough either. Basically a cookie cutter approach.

It maybe indeed moot from the treatment perspective, of course, because either dx will result in “just take famotidine”, but chronic allergic inflammation significantly elevates risks of osteoporosis, arthritis, etc, which I would think an informed patient would like to be aware of. H1/H2 blockers are mostly symptomatic treatment, and probably don’t lower risks of long term complications by much.

Allergy sadly remains a voodoo science.

>Would be interested to hear anything from people who have experienced a food allergy or intolerance towards tomatoes, something the NHS seems very skeptical on.

For me, it's itchy around the lips, but no more than that.

That could be oral allergy syndrome. Are you allergy to pollen/dust or other foods?

Aren't you afraid of a full blown anaphilactic reaction? I was taught to pay attention to those mild reactions as red flags

I don’t have any reactions beyond taste, but raw tomatoes, especially high quality ones, taste… poisonous to me. Not in an “i don’t like this” way, but a nearly uncontrollable gag reflex way.

If you offered me $1000 to eat a ripe tomato off the vine, I’m not sure i could do it.

I have heard not to feed tomatoes to your feeder insects because tomatoes are poisonous and could kill your reptile. Is that a myth as well?

Tomato leaves contain a number of toxic terpenes that are taken on by the tomato hornworm. I’ve heard that dogs will usually spit them our but can become ill if they eat too many. Hard to know the effect of these terpenes on your reptile, but I would not use them as a feed stock.

Much better analogy than drugs seems like our fear of things like fats in our diet. Regardless, this is pretty fluffy.

Or salt and high blood pressure.

> Like similar fruits and vegetables in the solanaceae family—the eggplant for example, the tomato garnered a shady reputation for being both poisonous and a source of temptation.

Wait what? So the infamous modern-day eggplant emoji really has a milennia-old history?

XFM - Ricky Gervais Show - Karl Pilkington heads knew about this donkeys years ago.

Also, "The Poisonous History of Tomatoes": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beBQgxdu2eY

I always found it interesting that squirrels, rabbits, and raccoons in my yard avoid eating the tomato’s. You’d think it would be an easy snack.

Tomatoes are red, obviously poisonous.

I don't know if you are serious. But they do look poisonous anyways.

Where I live there are poisonous berries that can be mistaken with cherry tomatoes.

Tomato are closely related to tobacco IIRC (as well as potato).

There might be traces of nicotine in the plant, which is a pesticide.

This actually also might give some fuel as to why people considered it dangerous.

EDIT after googling: Yes tomato contains nicotine, in particular before ripening.

People feared lots of regular food and things that we use today so tomato is only one example :)

Also feared by Europeans around the same time: bathing.

This is a common fallacy. Public bathhouses were common in medieval Europe, a legacy of Rome, and by the 18th century, “therapeutic bathing” was a thing.

There was a dip in bathing and bath houses in the 16-17th century due to fear of disease. Lots of aristocrats are well-known for avoiding bathing in that period. Louis XIV is famous for it.

well the plague has left marks

IMHO the best song to accompany reading this article is my favorite Paleo diet song: Megadeth - "Deadly Nightshade"

i wonder what other plants are that we fear or overlook that are edible/medical

I wouldn't say fear, but I'd be willing to bet you could go to any meadow nearby and find enough wild edible plants to make dinner. Most of the plants treated as weeds in north america were imported as food crops or were at one time or another used for food.

All you have to do is look at the drug scheduling system in the US for your answers

Old world tomatoes prior to early 1800's breeding projects and wild tomatoes look like currants, and being Solanaceae were considered a Nightshade. Not only in Europe, but as some have pointed out here well into the 1800s in America as well. George Washington grew tomatoes in his personal garden only for looks and thought they were poisonous. The vine of the plant itself as with all the solanaceae actually is at least mildly toxic but the dose makes the poison. So is eggplant. Potatoes are fine to eat raw when they're ripe so long as they're fully ripe, and not green. Green potatoes still contain solanine which will make you fairly sick if you eat enough of it. Potatoes also contain small amounts of nicotine, as do tomatoes and eggplants. For the longest time, tomato vines were considered to be completely toxic even very recently. They do contain tomatine and nicotine but only very recently in the last couple decades have some chefs ventured into cooking with a small bit of tomato leaf for an added rich tomato flavor.

For decades of large tomato growing, Ive gotten myself completely covered in tomato vine terpenes and juices from the vines to no ill effect. I was taught by my grandfather since I was really young that the tomatoes are ok to eat and that the vines are poisonous. This was mostly anecdotal and passed down from the time of the 1800s and earlier when people thought the entire tomato was a nightshade variety and then eventually thought only the fruit was edible. Only in the past 10 years or so among us tomato breeders and absolute tomato fanatics in the culinary world has the toxicity of the tomato vine really been being called into question. Some Michelin type chefs have been cooking dishes with tomato leaves and this was pretty much completely unheard of and thought to be poisonous just a couple decades ago.

And all that being said, plants are the closest thing that I believe we have on this planet to magic. They're perfect little chemical plants, flavonoid and terpene producers. Just in tomatoes alone I've got beefsteaks that taste like mild pineapple, rich, meaty, heavy, and acidic to mild, sweet, and light. Peach tomatoes that actually grow peach fuzz and have a mildly tangy citrus profile to them. With small cherry and currant varieties you have a quick sweet and tart snack that has no flesh. With a giant 2 pound heirloom beefsteak like a Sudduth strain Brandywine, the tomato is all flesh and is the absolute peak of bursting and rich "meaty" tomato flavor. I grow at least 10-15 different varieties a season and at times 40+. I can tell by the smell of touching the vines if the tomato plant is an heirloom indeterminate or a hybrid. Now I'm rambling, but I __really__ love tomatoes. Huge passion of mine. In the next few years I plan to start an entire acre dedicated to tomatoes and a focus on keeping some of the oldest heirlooms alive. Ben Quisenberry is a huge hero of mine.

Do you grow these commercially or as a hobby? Your descriptions of the varieties are very evocative, I wish I could have some in front of me right now to taste!

Always been a hobby of passion for me. I have sold them from time to time to chefs and do intend to purchase land soon which will include a bunch more space for larger number of plants. Culminating in more seed saving projects and breeding.

anything change from the last time you posted this?

Here's some discussion from 5 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052405

HN allows reposts with enough time separation; presumably not everyone on HN was also on it 5 years ago.

Yes, the HN mods reached out to me and asked me to post it again.

Sounds similar to the fear about drugs. Many people who use or abuse drugs have mental health issues and they are using the drug in an attempt to self medicate. People see this and think that drugs cause mental health issues, which is not true at all.

Well, I'd argue that overconsumption of hard drugs is a mental health issue, so there's definitely some relation.

Overconsumption is the symptom of mental health problems, not the cause. The only major class of drug induced mental disorder has to do with people who have a pre-existing condition. But when people can’t stop using drugs, it’s because they have an emotional problem. Most of the Vietnam vets who used heroin overseas stopped using without issue when they came back.

It may be a symptom, but it may also be its own cause. Chemical addiction is a thing and various drugs have various levels of risk or chemical addiction. Alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, heroine - you can get addicted to them without any emotional problems.

This is the old narrative and it’s wrong. Physical addiction is an exceedingly small part of the problem. And most cases of physical addiction are brought on by continued use which is almost always brought on by the cause of addiction which has been shown to be emotional and psychiatric problems.

If you accept this as dogma ("always") then the reasoning becomes circular.

Overuse is then "proof" of the person's underlying problems.

That seems too reductive. Find me a person without "emotional / psychiatric problems"(!)

Substance use is multi-faceted. It can be modulated by availability (cost being a factor), social acceptability, religion, personal biology (eg alcohol intolerance), emotional state, age, physical addiction, history/habit, availability of substitutes (e.g. availability of heroin will tend to suppress use of krokodil), social supports and more.

To this way of thinking there was widespread heroin use among GIs in Vietnam because it was socially acceptable in context, widely available, people were bored, their usual social and emotional supports were not present, and for some, trauma.

You can change any of the factors above and that will influence how people use.

> That seems too reductive. Find me a person without "emotional / psychiatric problems"(!)

This is objectively wrong. Could you find a person without OCD? No, you couldn’t under your framework because people use these names frivolously and in the context of their own lives. People use PTSD in the same way. Not everyone has these kinds of problems. That is super ignorant of you.

I can't be objectively wrong unless we agree (or you decide, I suppose) on some firm definition of what wellness or illness means, such as "by self diagnosis" or "according to a quorum of doctors diagnosing against the DSM".

Like yeah, a lot of people have OCD-like things going on. It's often fine though! A good psychiatrist will heavily weight "is it causing you problems in your life" before handing out a diagnosis or thinking about treatment.

IMHO what counts as wellness or illness is mostly societally constructed[1]. In various places and times for example, hearing voices or having visions is, if not "normal", accepted as something that can happen to anyone at various times in their life.

A person can be superbly well adapted and functional according to the norms and values of one social context yet be seen as deeply mentally ill in another.

[1] I do agree of course there are problems (often organic) that render people dysfunctional in almost any context. The situation is much more fuzzy for most.

It just shows how little you know. Like I said, you are very ignorant. There are specific biological pathways that are responsible for these major psychiatric illnesses. Many of them are metabolic. And because there are specific and quantifiable biochemical causes for hearing voices for example it’s possible for you to be objectively wrong about the whole thing as you very much are.

Why do you rule out drugs making people addicted? If some drugs can alter your consciousness, as they clearly do, why wouldn't some of them be able to get you addicted to them?

To be clear, I do agree that a lot of cases of addiction will start with emotional problems getting people into prolonged consumption. However, emotional problems can also get people into obsessive running, yoga or whatever. But after getting their mind straight people generally don't need to be careful and abstain from running due to risk of a relapse of obsessive running --- contrast this with drugs, most prominently alcohol. Risk of relapse only happens with drugs, because it seems to my layman mind that it's not the emotional problems that get people addicted, but substance abuse. Emotional problems get people into substance abuse, but it's the substance that creates addiction, not the emotional problems, because see example with running.

And there are other triggers that get people into irresponsible consumption (societal expectations, such as in military[1]) that aren't emotional problems. They nonetheless often end in addiction, because of what the substance is doing to people's brains.

[1]: I'm talking about what I've heard from my father from Soviet era military about nicotine. I don't know what it looks like now/in other countries.

Our emotional underpinnings motivate everything we do. My step mom is a hoarder. But she’s so smart and well adjusted that I didn’t recognize it until I was an adult because everything is perfectly organized and rationalized. But the core emotional issue of not being able to throw things away is there.

The vast majority of Vietnam soldiers who used heroin overseas did not continue using heroin after coming home. They weren’t using different kinds of heroin, therefore it is the person and not the material.

And what causes them to begin using it regularly in the first place? Do you think healthy people suddenly start regularly using drugs like alcohol, cannabis, or heroin after trying it once?

Well, as far as 'cannabis' goes, what's not to like. No hangover. It's very enjoyable, I don't know why you wouldn't want to smoke it frequently/regularly after trying it once. It would be weird to think "Well, that was really nice but I'm not doing that again." Plus it's not addictive, unlike those other two 'drugs' you mentioned.

I'm wondering what role that word 'suddenly' plays in that sentence. Juices it up, I guess, tries to make it sound scary.

It does have a hangover when you smoke too much, and the stupefying effect that lingers for days in some people is also something to dislike.

But when the drugs you actually need are locked behind a retarded system, you use what you can get.

I don’t see why not. Anyone can get addicted to drugs.

meth at high doses causes mental health issues. Period.

How do you know?

As does poverty, poor education, pollution, and mass incarceration. These are all cyclical problems.

I mean sure, while high most definitely

Can you please cite the text that states this? I'd like to know the mechanism involved.

Here's your mozzarella-heroin salad, madam. Enjoy.

Opiates (pre-heroin) were/are the most important drug in many parts of the world for large parts of human history and were consumed orally. Their sole issue is addiction/dependence, which can be managed. Opium is cheap, effective for many medical uses (gastro issues, sedative, pain relief, anesthesia, etc) and easy to cultivate on relatively poor land.

Not that anyone will read this, but...

I reply to someone who compares some warning over eating tomatoes with the totally unrelated drugs problem, making it even more irrelevant by dragging mental health into it, and then you reply with some positive spin on opiates? Because we use them under medical supervision for pain relief? What is this? The Taliban's PR agency?

And about your precious opiates: remember what happens when they're used freely. Just look for 30s at this clip starting at 4:08, then look in the mirror and repeat your opinion.

https://www.pbs.org/video/addiction-affects-everyone-43qm7x/

You misinterpret. I am not advocating for or against. It's important to study history and observe the objective facts of cultures that have had exposure for millennia. This would be an informed way to educate oneself prior to forming an opinion. Could it be that modern abuse and processing is quite a different beast to traditional use? You be the judge.

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