How do you feel about eating plants from the nightsade family? I love tomatoes and eat them almost daily, is this bad?

You will have no problems eating tomatoes. Here is a good list of poisonous plants. In any event, you are probably not going to buy anything in your produce section of Walmart that inherently contains poisons.

2. List of Poisonous Plants
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This is a list of plants containing poisonous parts that pose a serious risk of illness, injury, or death to humans.
Contents

* 1 Poisonous food plants
* 2 Poisonous garden plants
* 3 Poisonous ornamental plants
o 3.1 Notes
* 4 Poisonous wild plants

[edit] Poisonous food plants

* Potato (Solanum tuberosum) All green parts contain the glycoalkaloid solanine - considered inedible when raw; cooked potatoes have had starches softened and rendered edible
* Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) FOLIAGE & VINES contain alkaloid poisons
* Rhubarb (Rheum rhaponticum) Leaves contain oxalic acid salts
* Cherry (Prunus cerasus), as well as other species such as peach, plum, almond and apricot (Prunus) LEAVES & PITS contain cyanogenic glycosides
* Pokeweed (Phytolacca sp.) Leaves, berries and roots contain phytolaccatoxin and phytolaccigenin - toxin in young leaves is reduced when boiled twice

[edit] Poisonous garden plants

* Privet (Ligustrum sp.) Possibly fatal to humans, berries contain ligustrin and syringin
* Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) Fatal to humans, contain cardiac or steroid glycosides
* Lilies Most are poisonous, especially to cats
* Yew (Taxus baccata, the "English yew" All parts of the plant, except for the fleshy red bit of the fruit, contain taxane alkaloids
* Deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) All parts of the plant contain the toxic alkaloid atropine
* Oleander (Nerium oleander) All parts are toxic, containing nerioside, oleandroside, saponins, cardiac glycosides, but especially the leaves and woody stems
* Castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) Oil is purgative; seed meal separate from oil is source of the deadly toxic protein, Ricin
* Aconite (wolfsbane, monkshood) (Aconitum napellus) The poison is concentrated in the unripe seed pods and roots
* Delphinium Contains the alkaloid Delsoline

[edit] Poisonous ornamental plants

* Castorbean (Ricinus communis) Castor Oil Plant; The phytotoxin is ricin, a water soluble protein, which is concentrated in the seed. Also present are ricinine, an alkaloid, and an irritant oil.

[edit] Notes

* Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) Notable for not being poisonous, despite persistent beliefs to the contrary

[edit] Poisonous wild plants

* Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), Poison Oak (T.diversilobum), and Poison Sumac (T.vernix) All contain a highly irritating oil known as urushiol(this is actually not a poison but an allergen)
* Deadly Nightshade/Belladonna (Atropa belladonna) All parts of the plant contain the toxic alkaloid atropine
* Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum) All parts of the plant contain the relatively simple alkaloid coniine
* Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) Green portions of the plant, unripe fruit, and especially the rhizome contain the non-alkaloidal toxin podophyllotoxin


* Poison
* Toxin
* Poisonous Mushrooms

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Wow, what a quick response, thanks David.

My next question is why do some people suggest limiting or completly excluding these foods?

Excluding tomatoes? Dunno. Some members of this family of plants contain various unwanted alkaloids - whatever those are. You can do some peeping here:

[en.wikipedia.org]

-There seems to be some heresay that nightshade plants aggravate arthritis - although I doubt it:

[findarticles.com]

-In any event, the nightshade 'family' seems to be wide and diverse...and contain such foods as eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. I would advise cutting out these items if you are very concerned that they are having an adverse effect on your physique. Cut them out and see if your symptoms go away - you know? No worries.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

avacado Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My next question is why do some people suggest
> limiting or completly excluding these foods?

Some people say that all nightshades contain small amounts (or very small amounts) of toxic components, including nicotine. Unripe nightshades are supposed to be much worse, particularly for example green capsicum peppers (which are just unripe red ones).

See [en.wikipedia.org]

and also [www.tomatoesareevil.com] for a more extreme view!

Rob

--
Rob Hull - Funky Raw
My blog: [www.rawrob.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2008 11:22PM by Funky Rob.

I use to eat tomatoes like they were going out of style...I absolutely loved them. Well, then I read about the nightshade family and decided to cut them out of my diet for like a month. It is so weird I cannot even eat them now....they taste so nasty and somewhat toxic to me. I thought that maybe I was getting bad tomatoes so I had my sister try part of the tomato and she said it tasted great.

Nightshade, dayshade, moonshade, Mars-shade. Take it slow and you can pretty much eat anything. We are Omni-vores. and...Omni-givers+ if we choose carefully.

Love,
Paul

[www.oneillpaul.com-a.googlepages.com]

green chilis are bad?
new mexico will weep

i haven't eaten tomatoes in months,
when they're in season, i can't keep my hand off them
but only my garden ones

i'm going to keep eating them
they look and taste delicious to me
and i feel wonderful with them

now i ate eggplant for the first time in YEARS the other day
and thought i was going into labor
no more eggplant

peace-

Mama Cass Wrote:

> now i ate eggplant for the first time in YEARS the
> other day
> and thought i was going into labor
> no more eggplant

but...but... i LIKE going into labour!

heh, no more eggplant for me either though. my body says the most definite "NO!" to that and pushes it right back up 8S

all the other nightshades are ok in my belly though. so far anyhow.

LOL!!!

in another three weeks i'll definately been considering more eggplant.

it wasn't horrible, just kinda uncomfortable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2008 03:37PM by Mama Cass.

I react to Nightshade family plants. Especially tomatoes. I'm prone to arthritis and bursitis and the nightshades definately make those flare up for me. If you don't seem to react to them then don't worry about it. I eat them anyway off the vine in my garden in the summer. How could I not?

I would suggest reading the book ARTHERITIS by Norman F. Childers. The nightshades are not a good food in my opinion, with much studying of the matter. However, they are VERY addictive. They were my favorite food from the time I was little. Through experimenting on myself,I believe it is something everyone should look into. We are running into many raw fooders across the country who are reading and studying for themselves and coming to some very interesting conclusions. We had some dear friends who were mostly raw and she was having so much trouble with miscarrying babies...she would carry them several weeks, then lose the baby. She finally had her baby...but sadly it was born with a severe cleft palate!! I prayed a lot asking to know the reason for this when someone was on a healthy diet like that. The next day, someone gave my the book ARTHERITIS by Norman Childers and I opened it and read about a RN and her husband who was a vet. They had two sons both born with spina bifida who died. They did extensive research and found that the chemicals solanine and several others found in nightshades block the uptake of the B vitamins..just like any prescription drugs can.I myself have two children with very mild cleft palates and was eating what my family thought was "an overconcern with diet" (no processed foods or sugars etc..etc..) when I was carrying them plus taking lots of natural B supplements.....BUT I WAS EATING LOTS OF NIGHTSHADES, as was my dear friend who has the baby with the hairlip/cleft palate. I know another instance of a lady who had been on raw food for some time and only seemed to be getting worse. She went to a health retreat to try to receive help. They found she was really low in B vitamins and started supplementing with pills, then liquid, then IV's..none of which had any effect on her blood levels. Well, very sadly she died,and they are now blaming her raw food diet,but what they ARE NOT LOOKING AT is that most times when people go raw, their consumption of nightshades rise quite a bit. WE NEED TO SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE!! Norman childers states that he beleives the nightshades are responsible for more human ills than anything else. He mourns the fact that it will take so long to recognize this fact just like it took so long to recognize the ills of tobacco. The biggest reason we are ignorant is because we don't WANT to know,because it will mean giving up a VERY ADDICTIVE DRUG PLANT...And we don't like breaking addictions.We have just published a RAW RECIPE book that is totally nightshade free...It has been very hard to find recipes free from this.I homeschool our six children and this was a project we all participated in. You can go to www.normanchilders.com to find more information....WE HAVE TO DO OUR OWN RESEARCH AND NOT DEPEND ON WHAT SOMEONE ELSE IS TELLING US...Remember we are ALL fallible in our ideas etc..

EEK!!! O.O

I eat soooo many nightshades every day. I'll be sure to have my B levels check the next time I get bloodwork done.

Thanks for sharing.

Lots of love to you,

Wendi
XOXO

Yeah thanks a heap Kris !!
I've no idea how accurate that is but I will definately have to test this out. Would be interesting to hear of other experiences ?

The actual website for Dr. Norman Childers is www.noarthritis.com

All green fruit is poisonous to some extent. This may be particularly important with tomatoes. And any commercial tomato is most likely too green, and hence poisonous. The only tomatoes I consider edible are home grown, fully ripened on the vine ones.

I just try to eat stuff in season, locally grown, and tomatoes and other nightshades are definitely out of season most places right now. Besides I prefer the heirlooms and they are impossible to get now.
Even in the summer I try to balance them out with greens all the time. Maybe the concentrated tomato products are what causes the arthritis.

For years, decades really, I was unable to handle the acid of tomatoes. Pretty rough when your mom's maiden name is Signore, her mom's maiden name is Bifano, etc.

Find inner (so-called "spiritual" wellness, peace, joy, love and you will know all and nothing....know exactly what you need, but only when you need it.

Mmmmm - thank you vitamix and David Wolff and Brittany SPears. We are one...and please feel free to "second that".

Love,
Paul

[www.oneillpaul.com-a.googlepages.com]

By "green fruit" I assume you mean unripe fruit. Because there are some fruit that are green in their ripened state, including green tomatoes, green mangos, green tomatillos, etc.

But yes, any unripe fruit will contains toxins and should not in general be eaten. Its funny, in the tropics people like to eat unripe mangos, guavas, bananas and papaya as "vegetables", even cooking them sometime. If you are lucky, unripe fruit will simply be starchy. But there could also be toxins in the fruit to prevent animals from eating the fruit before the seeds have had a chance to fully mature and be viable for reproduction.