Has a food taster ever thwarted an assassination attempt?

Question

Important people have been known to employ food tasters to avoid assassination by poisoning. The linked Wikipedia article mentions that Claudius, Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin all used food tasters.

Has there ever been an actual assassination attempt that was successfully thwarted by a food taster's reaction? That is, was there any historical figure who chose not to eat food that was prepared for them because their food taster tried it first and ended up sick or dead? If so, what are the earliest and most recent documented cases?

I acknowledge that food tasters may deter assassination attempts; I'm specifically asking about assassination attempts that were thwarted only after the food taster ingested the food.

Answer 1

In general, awareness of the taster is likely to preclude the planning of an assassination in which a person would be poisoned through food.

One example of a food taster ‘doing his job’ may be seen in the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Although the two are arguably one of ancient history’s best-known lovers, it looks like they seemed to have distrusted each other. According to Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, during the time leading up to the fateful Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Mark Antony distrusted Cleopatra and was worried that she would poison him when she no longer had any use for him,and because of thathe had a food taster on hand all the time.

Pliny says that Cleopatra found this amusing, and decided to entertain herself at his expense. Therefore, at a banquet, she wore a circlet of flowers, of which their extremities were dipped in poison, on her head. As the party progresses, Cleopatra challenged Mark to swallow the flowers by mixing them with wine. Antony could not refuse the challenge, and nearly drank the poisoned wine when the queen herself stopped him. She then summoned his food taster, who, needless to say, dropped dead after drinking the wine. Thus, Cleopatra demonstrated to Mark Antony that the best precaution he had against being poisoned was to trust her. And that she was ruthless for letting a taster die knowing it was poisonous. A Deadly Bite: The Plight of the Ancient Food Taster