[Sca-cooks] Metal Poisoning

[Susan Lord Williams]

lilinah at earthlink.net) wrote:

> "The wealthier families of the 1500s had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead from these plates to leach out onto the food, causing lead poisoning and sometimes death. This poisoning happened most frequently with tomatoes. So, for approximately the next 400 years, most people considered tomatoes to be poisonous."
> [http://www.pinterest.com/scasocial/medieval-life-food/]
> 
I don’t know when it became known but a cause for the fall of the Roman Empire could have been because the Romans drank wine from pewter cups.

It is known that up and thru the 15th century, the Church prohibited the use of metal utensils to convey meat to the mouth. If eating fruits, fruit forks were permitted. The clergy claimed that this comes directly from the Bible but I do not know where. Italy was the first country to use forks for eating meat in Europe. The Muslims did not prohibit forkt. It is said that although Catherine of Medici tried to install this custom into France, her children, however, refused to eat with a fork.

There should be a chapter out there to inform us of the dangers of poisoning from metals. 

My theory is that there is a good reason for the prohibition of metal to be conveyed to the mouth when eating meat but I am not documented enough to list sources.