Tomato effect

The tomato effect occurs when effective therapies for a condition are rejected because they do not make sense in the context of the current understanding or theory 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.

A parallel concern is medical reversal, which is when new clinical information is based on new clinical trials or understanding of a disease, contradicting clinical practice. Medical reversal implies the original clinical practice failed to achieve success or had harms that outweighed benefits. That is contrasted with the phenomenon of replacement where a useful clinical practice is replaced by one that works better.