# Do food tasters really do any good?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-tasters-really-do-any-good/455825>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [July 9, 2008, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-tasters-really-do-any-good/455825 "2008-07-09T14:07:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-tasters-really-do-any-good/455825/1 "2008-07-09T14:07:09Z")

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[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/080704.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/080704.html)

Even in the old days, how many poisons worked so fast that a food taster would fall ill in time to prevent the king from eating it?

Are there documented cases where involvement by food tasters actually saved a monarch’s life?

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**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-tasters-really-do-any-good/455825/2 "2008-07-09T15:01:00Z")

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It’s simpler than that. Poisons generally taste bad. So bad that a food laced with enough poison to kill someone would probably taste foul at the first bite.

A “yucchh” and a spitting out are less picturesque than someone dropping dead face-first into the soup, Hollywood-style, but it was a more likely scenario.