Why avoid potatoes, bell peppers and tomatoes?
Question from my friend:
Why are you avoiding potatoes, bell peppers, and tomatoes?? I don’t know if I could live without those!!
I forgot what’s the name of those herbal tea “drops” that you told me about a long time ago??
Okay, easy one first – the tea drops. The drops are green tea, not herbal – but still very tasty. I brew our iced tea at home, but I use the tea drops anytime I’m out and about. There are two brands that I use. Pure Inventions and HerbaSway. Pure Inventions makes a very good product line of teas, especially the peach flavor. They are pricey though (around $30/bottle) and I recommend finding someone to buy them from on eBay. It will save you as much as $9 a bottle, occasionally more. I tend to buy from this seller, but you can always find others selling it on eBay. I can usually get the HerbaSway teas for quite a bit cheaper than the cheapest Pure Inventions. I buy the HerbaSway teas from our local discount natural foods store, Super Supplements. They sell the peach tea for $16/bottle.
Onto the more difficult question. First, I love potatoes, bell peppers and tomatoes! I’m with you on finding it difficult to live without them. And I won’t forever. But while I’m working back toward optimal health, I’m going to go without for a time. Here’s why.
All three of these foods are the nightshade family. Nightshade plants can cause an inflammatory reaction in the body. Nightshade plants contain an alkaloid called solanine, which many people find causes pain and inflammation in their bodies. (Note: the solanine is found in the green portions and any growths of a potato – remove these to reduce/eliminate solanine consumption. Same is true with green peppers which are actually just that, green and unripe. Eat the red, yellow and orange peppers to avoid excess solanine.) For example, many arthritis sufferers find if they remove the nightshade plants from their diet, the pain and inflammation in their joints are significantly reduced. Eczema and psoriasis sufferers have found relief by removing nightshade plants from their diets as well. The nightshade plants also contain other problematic elements like nicotine, scopolamine , atropine, solanine, and more)
Nightshade plants haven’t been proven to cause problems in everyone. Most people will benefit from removing them from their diet for a while and then reintroducing them. Once you reintroduce them into your diet, you will find if you have a reaction or not. From that, you will know whether it is smart for you to avoid them in your diet permanently. Also, if you do include them in your diet, try to go organic. Nightshade plants are notorious for being heavily treated with pesticides… and because of their thin skins, they absorb a lot of the toxic pesticides.
One additional note on potatoes. Potatoes are virtually pure starch… aka sugar. The body breaks down the starch in potatoes directly into sugar. Since I’m working to bring down the amount of sugar my body processes, eating potatoes is going to be counterproductive to that. I’m not avoiding sugar simply because of the calories but because of the what sugar does to the body (I can share more about that in another post down the road.)
