Can we ever eat too many vegetables? It depends on the veggie. People sometimes have allergies or sensitivities to food, but there’s one family of vegetables that is harmful if consumed in large quantities: the nightshades.
Nightshade vegetables include many that are commonly consumed such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, white potatoes, and okra. Tobacco and belladonna are members of the nightshade group as well. Nightshades contain alkaloids, which are bitter and mildly to moderately neurotoxic, depending on the plant. If you’ve ever tasted raw or under-cooked eggplant, you may have experienced the tongue-numbing chemical. Inedible members of the nightshade family contain much higher amounts of alkaloids and are toxic beyond inflammation, also affecting the nervous system. Nicotine in tobacco is an alkaloid and belladonna has been used to make poison and is perhaps the deadliest nightshade of all.
Most people will be only mildly affected by the consumption of alkaloids in nightshades, especially in small quantities and if eaten on an irregular basis. In many cases, the health benefits of these vegetables outweigh the risks. Thoroughly cooking nightshades reduces the alkaloid content, effectively neutralizing some of the risk for otherwise healthy people. For certain individuals, however, such as those with arthritis, autoimmune issues or anything aggravated by inflammation, nightshades may pose a problem, whether cooked or raw. Nightshades are particularly notorious for worsening joint pain and body aches. Many who have tried eliminating them for a couple of weeks have noticed dramatic improvements.
Eating vegetables is still one of the best things we can do for our health, particularly if they are organic. For those of us managing conditions, it would be a good idea to begin keeping a food diary, where effects of certain foods can be recorded. Inflammatory response varies widely from person to person and keeping track of it is a good way to determine how much of each vegetable we can tolerate. Interestingly, coffee, which has many health benefits, is a cousin of nightshades. Coffee and nightshades are in the larger plant group asterid. Caffeine is an alkaloid, so tracking the effects of coffee makes sense, even though it’s only a nightshade cousin.
