Peanuts are fatal to some people, yet we eat them all the time. Here's a counter-example to your first claim. Another one is Fugu fish, which I personally ate at a restaurant, and which are known to be deadly if not prepared correctly.
Rollercoaster is dangerous to anyone with weak skeleton, and can likely induce heart attack as can a horror movie. Here's a counter-example to your other claim.
Do you have any examples that support your claims?
> Peanuts are fatal to some people, yet we eat them all the time.
Peanuts are banned from most schools.
> Another one is Fugu fish, which I personally ate at a restaurant, and which are known to be deadly if not prepared correctly.
That applies to most foods, e.g. tomatoes, rhubarb, etc.
When is the last time you had chicken-of-the-woods in a restaurant though? Oh wait, never. Because 90% of people find them delicious, but the other 10% cyanose and then start projectile vomiting and shitting themselves. Of course on your own that's not a big deal because you just bioassay it on yourself first, but in a restaurant that doesn't work.
Well, that's a far cry from you can't buy in any restaurant or store no matter how much you're willing to pay.
So, we have established there are foods that are dangerous and can be had at a restaurant (raw fish, raw meat, peanuts, fugu), and there could be some foods that are dangerous and cannot be had at a restaurant (chicken-of-the-woods).
I wasn't claiming that there are no potentially dangerous foods that you can buy at restaurants, only that there are many potentially dangerous foods that you can't buy at restaurants.
Casu marzu[1] comes to mind, though wikipedia indicates that it's legal(ish) again. Not that I think it would be that great a loss to society if it were unavailable, but there you go.
Kind of an extreme example, though. I don't think that it justifies the notion that society suffers under a tragedy of many useful foods being unavailable. I also would need to be persuaded of that.
Oh yeah, I've seen that, it's like the lemon party of food porn or something. And anyway, it's only dangerous if the maggots are dead! I thought of a more mainstream example (to repeat myself from another reply) - there's a lot of regulations surrounding raw milk and cheese.
I'm more familiar with mushrooms than plants. But are a ton of plants that aren't served for various reasons. In terms of plants that aren't served specifically because they have a high likelihood of causing bad reactions, I'm not sure -- milkweed and certain species of fiddleheads might be good examples. There are lots of different reasons for why certain foods aren't commercially available, and often it's just completely arbitrary. E.g. the reason you can't buy coca tea is that Obama doesn't recognize religions different from Christianity as being valid. (His administration specifically lobbied the UN not to let South Americans use it for religious purposes.)
Interesting, I didn't know about the coca tea. I thought of another health-based one: unpasteurized milk and cheese. Generally not a problem in Europe, but highly regulated in some states (e.g. no raw milk cheese younger than 60 days, no raw milk period).
There are other animal-based ones that aren't really health related. E.g. restaurants aren't allowed to serve meat that's not FDA inspected, but the FDA only inspects a small variety of meats. There was a restaurant in SF that was serving cricket tacos and they got shut down because of this:
So yeah, the FDA caters to big industry, and the meat coming out of feedlots is scarier than your typical roadkill, but this is pretty well-known.
My understanding is that although there are a ton of regulations restricting the sale of food, the health reasons cited are generally dubious, rather than genuine.
The chicken-of-the-woods thing is obviously genuine, and I'd believe the same for a lot of different mushrooms. I've purchased about 20 species of wild fungi and I'm basically content with that variety. Raw milk / cheese I would say was a dubious health reason.
Side note: if a reply link isn't there, you just need to wait a bit longer.
Rollercoaster is dangerous to anyone with weak skeleton, and can likely induce heart attack as can a horror movie. Here's a counter-example to your other claim.
Do you have any examples that support your claims?