Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Tomato effect

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The tomato effect occurs when effective therapies for a condition are rejected, usually because they do not make sense in the context of the current understanding of the disease in question. The name refers to the fact that tomatoes were rejected as a food source by most North Americans until the end of the 19th century, because the prevailing belief at the time was that they were poisonous.

Examples

Tomatoes were becoming a staple food in Europe by 1560s, they were shunned in North America since they were considered poisonous until the 1820s. Similarly, willow tree bark extract was ignored to provide relief of pain and fever, and it was not until the late 1800s with the commercial production of salicylate (also known as Aspirin) that this treatment was prescribed to patients.

In 1753, it was established that scurvy can be treated with lemon juice. Despite this knowledge, it was considered an imbalance of the humors until the mid 1800s.

In the mid 1800s, industrialization polished brown rice to white rice, stripping the rice from vitamin B. This led to the sudden heart attacks of millions in Asia due to beriberi (vitamin B deficiency). Orthodox medical practice at the time recognized the prevalence of germs in all diseases, and refused to prescribe rice bran.

References

Tomato effect Wikipedia