5 Toxic Foods People Used To Eat
From our modern vantage point, the culinary options of bygone cultures are sometimes difficult to comprehend. It seems that hungry people gobbled down anything they could get their hands on, including dormice (rodents), beaver tails, and fish bladder jam.
But while some of the choices seem unusual in hindsight, we can at least grasp their nutritional value. Other foods, however, were just downright dangerous to the human digestive system, and certainly wouldn’t have been on the menu had the consumer been aware of the consequences. Here are five toxic foods that people unwittingly used to eat.
Stone Age Fish
Offering a rich source of vitamins, protein, and fatty acids, seafood is generally considered among the healthiest cuisine to eat — unless, of course, the specimens being consumed contain sky-high concentrations of heavy metals. Such was the case with the Atlantic cod and harp seals that comprised the meals of Stone Age settlers in northern Norway’s Varanger Peninsula around 5000 to 1800 BCE.
According to a recent study, cod bones from the settlement contained levels of cadmium up to 22 times higher than contemporary recommended limits, while seal bones showed similar dangerously elevated levels of lead. While it might seem strange that wildlife came with the risk of carcinogens in an era well before industrialization, the study authors suggest this was the result of climate change. It’s possible the thaw from the last ice age (between about 120,000 and 11,500 years ago) produced rising sea levels that carried soil containing the potent minerals into the water.
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Roman Defrutum
It’s well known that the ancient Romans enjoyed their wine, but it’s possible a component of the winemaking process fueled ill health in a manner that went beyond the typical hangover. The Romans made a sweet, syrupy substance called defrutum, which was prepared by boiling unfermented grape juice. This syrup was used as a preservative for wine and fruit, as well as in sauces for dishes of pork, veal, and lentils, as described in the famed Roman cookbook De Re Coquinaria.
The problem was in the sweetener’s preparation: Ancient scholars including Cato and Pliny the Elder called for the syrup to be boiled in a lead-lined pot, inevitably resulting in the syrup’s absorption of lead. Although the hazards of lead poisoning were known to the Romans, it apparently never occurred to these great minds that they were endangering the public with their instructions.
Tansies
Nowadays, a typical Easter meal might include a ham and a sampling of the chocolate left by the Easter Bunny, but for Christians in medieval England, the holiday was incomplete without the serving of the tansy. The dish was named for its primary ingredient, the yellow-flowered tansy plant, which was mixed with herbs and a hearty helping of eggs to produce what was essentially a large, sweet omelet.
Coming on the heels of Lent, the tansy not only provided a welcome change from the strict diet of lentils and fish consumed over the previous 40 days, but also was said to provide relief from the gas-inducing Lenten meals. Despite its purported medicinal qualities, the plant is actually mildly toxic, its pyrrolizidine alkaloids dangerous to humans in high doses. Although the poison didn’t hinder the long-standing popularity of the tansy on dinner tables, people are generally dissuaded from eating the plant today.
Victorian Bread
You could highlight an array of foods in Victorian England that would fail to pass muster under any food safety laws, from the lead chromate found in mustard to the arsenic compounds used to color confectionery. However, given its ubiquity in households of the era, the most egregious example may well be bread.
Seeking to create thick loaves of an appealing white hue, Victorian bakers mixed in such ingredients as ground-up bones, chalk, and plaster of Paris. Another common additive was alum, an aluminum-based compound that inhibited digestion and contributed to the malnutrition rampant among the poorer population. Although the dangers of adulterated edibles were known among the more educated members of the public, there was little stopping the food producers and distributors who ignored these health risks in favor of profits.
Rhubarb Leaves
Known for its reddish stalk and tart flavor, rhubarb in the hands of a capable chef can be used to create delicious pies, sauces, and jams. That is, the stalks can be turned into such kitchen delights — the thick green leaves are chock-full of toxic oxalic acid and therefore not meant for ingestion. Unfortunately, this fact was not well known a century ago, as rhubarb leaves were recommended as a source of vegetation during the food shortages of World War I.
Consumed in small but regular doses, the leaves inhibit the beneficial effects of calcium and trigger the buildup of calcium oxalate, leading to kidney stones. While a human would normally have to eat something like 6 pounds of the stuff to experience the more acute effects (including vomiting, diarrhea, and kidney failure), there was at least one reported case of oxalic acid poisoning during the rhubarb leaf’s brief run as a lettuce substitute.
