The Foods That Were Once Considered Dangerous but Are Now Popular Again

A handful of foods sitting in an ordinary grocery cart today spent centuries either banned, feared or blamed for making people seriously ill. The actual reasons behind that fear turn out to be stranger, and in some cases more avoidable, than the myths that grew around them.

Some of these foods were genuinely dangerous under the wrong conditions, while others were victims of pure misunderstanding. Either way, science eventually caught up and cleared the way for them to become genuine staples.

None of them required a dramatic reinvention to earn their place back at the table. Here are the foods that were once considered dangerous and are now some of the most popular in the world.

Tomatoes Were Blamed For A Problem They Never Caused

Tomatoes earned the nickname poison apple across 16th and 17th century Europe, largely because of their close relation to deadly nightshade plants. Wealthy Europeans eating from pewter plates high in lead often fell ill after eating tomatoes, since the fruit’s natural acidity leached that lead directly into the food, according to Kitchen Divas.

The tomato itself was never actually the problem, the plates were. “There’s so many different ways that you can eat it,” author Arthur Allen told NPR, describing how the fruit’s sheer versatility eventually won over generations of skeptics.

Potatoes Actually Did Poison People, Just Not For The Reason Feared

Unlike tomatoes, potatoes carried a real, documented risk tied to solanine, a natural toxin found in their leaves, sprouts and green tinted skin. In 1899, 56 German soldiers fell ill from eating potatoes containing high solanine levels, and a child died during a similar outbreak in Glasgow in 1918, according to Better Magazine.

France actually banned potatoes for a period, driven partly by their resemblance to toxic nightshade relatives. A French chemist eventually rehabilitated the vegetable’s reputation by hosting elaborate potato feasts for the royal court, according to Snappy Facts, proving both its safety and its flavor to skeptical aristocrats.

Coffee And Sushi Both Had To Overcome Simple Distrust

When coffee reached Europe in the 1600s, some religious leaders reportedly called it the bitter invention of Satan, arguing against its consumption on religious grounds. Legend holds that Pope Clement VIII eventually tried it himself and found it delicious enough to bless rather than ban, according to the same Snappy Facts report.

Sushi faced a more recent, far less dramatic version of the same suspicion, with many Western diners treating raw fish as reckless rather than simply unfamiliar. Better refrigeration, global trade and increasingly precise preparation eventually turned it into one of the most respected cuisines in the world.

None of these foods actually changed all that much, what changed was the science, the storage technology and the willingness to look past an old assumption. Fear fades a lot faster than flavor ever does, and every food on this list eventually proved exactly that.