Anyone who’s ever had a pizza can tell you that tomatoes are big in Italy. In fact, they’re staples in many European kitchens. But for hundreds of years, Europeans feared tomatoes.

Originally from the Americas, tomatoes made their way to Europe in the 1500s. The Aztecs, people who lived in what is now Mexico, ate tomatoes. But Europeans grew them only as pretty plants. That could be because around this time, a British botanist (a scientist who studies plants) named John Gerard wrote that tomatoes shouldn’t be eaten. The tomato plant was “of ranke and stinking savour,” Gerard said. In other words, it was pretty much poison.

It didn’t help that, over the years, European kings, queens, and nobles sometimes died after eating tomatoes. No one realized that the tomatoes weren’t the problem. Wealthy people often ate off fancy plates made of pewter, which contained a lot of lead. Unlike tomatoes, lead is toxic.

During the 1700s, European settlers in what’s now the United States started growing tomatoes. They dared to eat them and survived. It wouldn’t be until the 1800s that people in Europe accepted these fruits and started inventing delicious recipes—like cheese and tomato pizza.