How long and why were Europeans afraid to eat tomatoes? Detailed answer

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How long and why were Europeans afraid to eat tomatoes? Detailed answer

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How long and why were Europeans afraid to eat tomatoes?

The tomato story is one of the funniest mistakes made by Old World botanists. All the plants of the nightshade family they knew before (and there are less than a dozen of them in Europe) were poisonous to varying degrees.

The first European botanist to mention the tomato in 1554 was the Italian Pietro Andrea Mattiolli. Due to its large size, he attributed this fruit to the genus Mandrake, famous for its poisonousness. And since yellow-colored tomatoes came to Europe, they received the Italian name "pomo d'oro" (golden apple).

Beautiful fruits of tomatoes, hanging in elegant clusters, aroused interest among flower growers. Therefore, new ornamental plants have firmly established themselves in the collections of botanical gardens and flowerbeds. The French called them "pom d'amour" (apple of love).

Which of the Europeans was the first to try the tomato and when it happened is unknown, but back in the 1780th century this plant was rarely eaten. In XNUMX, the Russian ambassador to France reported to Catherine II that French vagabonds were eating tomatoes from the flower beds and did not seem to suffer from this.

Moreover, even in America, on the continent where the Peruvian and Mexican Indians have long grown tomatoes (the name "tumatl" after the Mexicans was first used in 1572 by the Italian scientist Gilandini), the tomato was considered poisonous until the middle of the 1776th century. And so poisonous that in XNUMX, during the American War of Independence, George Washington's cook tried to poison him with meat cooked with tomatoes. The cook himself was so frightened by what he had done that he cut his own throat in fear of punishment, and George Washington, having tasted the tomato sauce, did not notice anything.

This is how the botanists, who were smart with tomatoes, frightened the Europeans for a long time with their imaginary poisonousness. The tomato boom in the world began only after the First World War - more than 350 years after the first acquaintance of Europeans with tomatoes.

Author: Kondrashov A.P.

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At the height of the emancipation movement of the 1920s, American tobacco companies began to actively promote smoking among women who were not allowed to appear with a cigarette in public places. A specially hired "father of modern PR" Edward Bernays played a big role in this, suggesting that cigarettes be positioned as "torches of freedom" that should be lit as a sign of the fight against oppression. The news about the procession of smoking ladies at the Easter parade in New York in 1929, where models paid by Bernays and photographers who made beautiful reports, were of great resonance. As a result of these efforts, the share of women among the total number of cigarette buyers has increased from 5 to 18% in a decade.

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