37. Confusing Tomatoes
The weird fear of tomatoes comes across as less weird when examined in the context of the time. Tomato plants not only look like deadly nightshade, a suspected ingredient of witches’ magic goop, they are just about identical to the untrained eye. Similarly, some tomato varieties, such as yellow cherry tomatoes, look remarkably similar to hallucinogenic mandrake fruits, another ingredient of the witches’ goop. So at a time when Europe was engulfed by hysteria surrounding anything having to do with witches, a plant that looked like an ingredient of a witches’ concoction was bound to prove controversial.
Even today, many people suspect those who experiment with new foods. In the 1540s, experimenting with tomatoes entailed the risk of getting turned into a werewolf, or getting accused by suspicious neighbors of practicing witchcraft. Unsurprisingly, many people decided to leave tomatoes alone. Indeed, the only place where it was safe to have them was Spain, where the Spanish Inquisition had temporarily declared that the belief in witchcraft was heretical. The Spanish and Italians eventually incorporated tomatoes into their diets wholesale, but the English and French remained in the “tomatoes are demonic” weird camp for a ridiculously long time, before finally relenting.
