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  WEEKLY ARTICLE

                     The Deadly Nightshades

  

 

We wanted to write a few words this week about a noteworthy family of vegetables, the nightshades, aka the deadly nightshades.

(please note: sweet potatoes, which are not in the potato family, are not nightshades). And then there are a few additional vegetables that are not true nightshades, but have a similar effect on our bodies physiologically, such as spinach and swiss chard. 

When I worked in restaurants years ago, a trick used to salvage overly salty soups and sauces was to drop a few raw potatoes into the simmering pot. It was a well - known fact that the potato would absorb the excess salt (and inadvertently the minerals as well), so that the soup or sauce would not taste as salty.

Please note, that because of the extreme drawing effect of the nightshade vegetables, the potato in particular, they also draw many toxins, pesticides, and heavy metals out of impure soil. So: If there is one group of foods that is absolutely essential to eat only organically, it would be the nightshades.

The nightshades grow, as their name implies, at night. They like deep, dark, moist (mostly tropical) places. In the soil and in the human body. They like to hang out with unfriendly bacteria and unhealthy cells, and because it is in their nature to "collect" things, things such as toxins and such, it is not a good idea to eat them excessively. 

Many human illnesses originate in the deep recesses of our bodies.

Many years ago I rented an organic gardening plot that many long time gardeners had farmed on for years and years. These long time gardeners taught me that they did not plant other vegetables near their peppers and tomatoes because the other vegetables would not do well if they grew close to the peppers and tomatoes. Why?? Because the peppers and tomatoes, even in the ground, pull all of the vital nutrients (minerals) from the soil, towards them, thus weakening the other plants that grow around them.

In our bodies they do the same thing, pulling vital minerals out of our bones and thus weakening them.

These long time gardeners used the term "deadly nightshades" to refer to the vegetables that zapped energy from the other plants. The historical source of the term stems from old time farming practices.

It is a very fascinating subject, one that is shrouded in mystery, and full of history, and yes, quite unbelievable too! Unbelievable in that food can have such a direct and instantaneous positive or negative effect on our health, depending on which foods we choose, or don't choose, to ingest.

Along with the true nightshade vegetables unique and unfortunate ability to interfere with our body's ability to maintain calcium and other important bone building minerals, and spinach and swiss chards high oxalic acid content with interferes with calcium absorption, I want to point out yet another substance contained within nightshade vegetables, called solanine.  

 It is by definition, a poisonous alkaloid that naturally occurs in all of the vegetables categorized as nightshades, and is a powerful inhibitor of cholinesterase, an enzyme that originates in the brain and is responsible for flexibility of muscle movement, (thus the arthritis, joint pain, inflammatory connection).

There are several other foods that are not specifically categorized as nightshades, but also contain high amounts of naturally occurring solanine, such as okra, artichokes, and bananas.

In fact, the understanding of the negative effects of nightshades was developed in part by observing livestock, and their painful physical reaction to grazing on weeds that contained solanine.

Right about now you are probably thinking: Yikes, does this mean that I can never eat a tomato again?? No, it doesn't. But it does mean that you want to be careful not to over use them.

This goes for the other nightshade vegetables as well.

To be sure, all nightshades are vegetables, and in as much, they do have some redeeming qualities, such as containing vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, but none that cannot be obtained from numerous other sources. They can even be helpful for certain and specific medical conditions. But, if you suffer from any type of inflammatory condition, (and who among us doesn't!), or are prone to osteoporosis, fungal conditions, or certain types of growths and tumors deep within the body, or use nightshades excessively, and to the exclusion of the many other great vegetable choices that are available, you could either be creating, or perpetuating, an imbalance within your system.  

  A good way to avoid over use is to use them in their fresh form only, never in a concentrated form such as a sauce or puree. For example: One slice of a tomato is a far cry from a small can of tomato puree in which perhaps as many as 20 tomatoes were used to puree it down to a thick pasty concentrate. Do you get that fact?? Purees and concentrates require far more of the foods that they are made from than their fresh counterparts.

A basic premise of good cooking is to use foods selectively. Which means: Do not indiscriminately add everything and anything to everything and anything. Honor and use all foods very selectively, and only in certain dishes that require them as part of their innate characteristic.

If all of us were to use the nightshade vegetables in this way they would not be nearly as "deadly". Currently, they are seriously overused. Potatoes, potato starch, potato flour, tomato paste, dehydrated tomato powder, tobacco, and on and on, are the main fillers in almost all canned, processed, and packaged foods. Yes, even so called "health" foods. Read the labels and see for yourself. Or better yet, just don't use canned, packaged, and processed foods.

Observe people who eat a lot of "nightshades" and see for yourself if they do in fact suffer from arthritic / inflammatory type maladies.

We had a private client some years ago who just loved bananas. She suffered from painfully arthritic hips, knees, and feet. After consulting with us, she gave up all nightshades, but would relapse every few months on bananas. It was easy for us to correlate that when she was off of the bananas she would rejoice about her pain free condition, and during a relapse, she would moan and groan and complain constantly about her pain. After observing this correlation (which she did not see), for several months, we decided to point it out to her.

What an enlightenment it was for her. She immediately  grasped the connection, and was then able to enjoy many banana-less, pain free years!

 As quoted in the October 2009 issue of Harvard Health Watch Newsletter (one of my favorite medical publications): "Certain vegetables are an excellent source of calcium, such as bok choy, the cabbages, collard greens, and kale". (These vegetables also contain high amounts of magnesium and potassium, which reduce blood acidity (read as: makes the body more alkaline), thus lowering the urinary excretion of calcium).

Harvard Newsletter goes on to say that "Spinach and swiss chard, which also contain calcium, are not as good of choices, because along with calcium, they also contain oxalates (oxalic acid) which make it hard for the body to absorb the calcium".  

So again, this does not mean that you can never eat a potato, tomato, spinach, etc. again. Rather, it is meant to make you aware that you make powerful choices every single day in regard to what you decide to eat, or not eat, or not even think about as you ingest your food each day.

This is intended to encourage and facilitate you to make powerfully GOOD, well informed, and well educated diet and health related food choices!

Please note / and don't worry: We never use nightshade vegetables or any of the other above mentioned guilty culprits in our Wholly Macro menus.

But we do use a huge array of multitudes of other super healthy foods and vegetables, as you will see below as you check out this weeks Wholly Macro Delivery Menu.

In The Best Of Health To You As Always.

Gayle and Jaime / Wholly Macro