The tomato effect: Rejection of highly efficacious therapies (1984)

"The rejection of potentially effective treatments because “everyone knows it won’t work” is named for Americans’ persistent belief – from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries – that tomatoes were poisonous. Although tomatoes were available in America, throughout the 1600’s and 1700’s they were considered inedible decorative plants. The belief that tomatoes were poisonous stemmed from the suspicion that the tomatoes were a part of the poisonous nightshade family. Americans, however, were aware that Europeans were serving and eating tomatoes at the dinner table.

The fate of the tomato in American changed in 1820, when a New Jersey man publicly consumed a basketful to prove they were safe to eat. When he neither dropped dead nor even suffered any apparent ill effects, witnesses of the experiment slowly began to open their minds. By the end of the decade, American gardeners were growing tomatoes for food.

Dr. Goodwin coined the term “tomato effect” to explain the rejection by American medicine of therapies that did not fit with currently accepted theories of disease and treatment. He believed the tomato effect delayed the acceptance of vitamin and mineral supplementation. This type of intervention is outside the familiar medical paradigm, particularly for mental illness."

Source:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-breakthrough-dep...