[Mekatra]

So when tomatos were first introduced to England (In the late 1500s if I remember properly) they were believed to be highly poisonous. They are classified as part of the nightshade family and the stalks and leaves actually are toxic, though they will just make you sick, not dead. However, people that were eating tomato became very ill.

The problem was that most of the aristocracy that could afford new and exotic ingredients were using pewter plates at this time. One of the ingredients in these pewter plates was lead. The tomato's acidity allowed it to leech the lead from the pewter plates, thus the people were actually getting lead poisoning. Of course they got sick after eating the tomatos, so obviously they were the ones to blame.

Potatos got a bad reptuation for a similar but different reason. When potatos were first introduced to the court they had traveled from South America to England and had done what all potatoes do on a long journey and had started trying to grow new potatoes. As you may or may not know, the potatoes are ALSO a member of the nightshade family and while the potato itself is perfectly harmless to everything but my attempts to lose weight, the stalks and leaves are toxic. Anyway, the court had been promised this fantastic new dish, but the cook did not know that the leaves and stalks shouldn't be used to he served them causing everyone to get sick.