Nightshades

gnolan

I've been reading a little about nightshades and some of alleged effects they can have on certain susceptible individuals.


Unfortunately the bulk of information out there seems to be the same old articles rehashed and reworded. I don't know if anyone here can help, but one sentence that crops up over and over is, " 'x' is part of the nightshade family".


Now thats all well and good, but what characteristic does 'x' possess that means it belongs to the nightshade family? How does one measure this characteristic? All this would lead then to certain members of the nightshade family being worse than others (if you are to believe they are bad at all in the first place). For example: tobacco contains 1g of whatever per 100g, and tomatoes contain 0.3g of whatever per 100g.

Adelie

it's simply a family of plants. they are members of that family because they are genetically related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightshade

Edit: also about the harmfulness of nightshades - different parts of different plants contain different levels of different alkaloids, which are poisonous. So yes certainly some are worse than others, e.g. belladonna vs. tomatoes...

gnolan

Adelie wrote: »

it's simply a family of plants. they are members of that family because they are genetically related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightshade

Edit: also about the harmfulness of nightshades - different parts of different plants contain different levels of different alkaloids, which are poisonous. So yes certainly some are worse than others, e.g. belladonna vs. tomatoes...

Thanks. Is there any literature stating the average quantities of alkaloids contained in each?

Adelie

gnolan wrote: »

Thanks. Is there any literature stating the average quantities of alkaloids contained in each?

Not that I know of but I haven't looked. I guess it would be complicated to draw up such a list because there are lots of different alkaloids and the concentration of each in a plant varies because of so many factors.

for example
- tomato leafs and stem contain harmful amounts but the fruit doesn't
- sprouted potatoes contained harmful amounts but unsprouted potatoes are OK for most people
- cooking removes a certain amount from food

Basically if you are sensitive to them, or your doctor warned you against them, you should probably avoid them completely. Or you might want to cut them out completely for a while as an experiment to see if it improves your health. In fact cutting them out temporarily is probably a smart idea for someone with health problems. But if you don't have a problem with them then I wouldn't worry about them (at least the normal ones people eat!)