Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagel welcome back to the nutrition

divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous

Ray recently asked me to weigh in on conflicting information he's read about

tomatoes, peppers, and other foods in the so-called Night Shade family. Many folks

say that Night shades cause inflammation and should be avoided, he writes,

but you recommend them as anti-inflammatory in your book,

The Inflamm Free Diet Plan.

Can you clarify? The same week, I got another email, this time from Jim, who wrote,

I've been avoiding all nightshades for about five months now in an effort to clear up an inflammatory condition, but I haven't really seen any

improvement.

I would love to return to eating green chilies and tomatoes.

Okay, Ray and Jim and everyone else who's ever wondered about this, I want to see if I can clear up some of the confusion about nightshades and inflammation.

spoiler, there's good news for you, Jim.

So first, what are nightshades?

Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplants,

as well as tobacco, all belong to the same botanical family, commonly known as the nightshades.

The Latin name for this family of plants is solenacea, because all of them produce an

alkaloid compound called solenine.

Solanine is part of these plants natural defense system

acting as a nerve poison in insects that try to eat the plants. Now obviously it's going to take

a lot more solanine to cause problems for a human being

than it would for a bug. And for most people the amount of solanine you'd ingest by eating

...