More and more the web is turning into a food trap: there are articles that suggest us to limit food, and dietary fads that influence us to consider harmless foods as possible poisons to be avoided like the plague, or we can have such harmful effects that comparing the side effects of antibiotics are a no brainer!

Only by wanting to document better, it turns out that fears about these foods are absolutely unfounded, and that if we really fear them, normal rules would be enough to help us live and eat with serenity: but even if we did not follow any rules, our body would not end. poisoned by eating these foods.

The trouble is time. While it is very easy for the food hoax to make its way onto the net (how many things do we share on facebook only to discover that they are not true?), It takes time and patience and a bit of research to debunk it.

Today I deal with solanaceae: to be clear, those vegetables and fruits, including tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and aubergines, which according to some would contain solanine and other toxic antinutrient substances for humans, with an inflammatory and even aggravating effect of some pathologies (arthritis).

But is it really so? After having even heard doctors speak ill of nightshades (Berrino, the epidemiologist), I researched myself carefully, looking for scientific studies that proved something. And this is what I found.

1) The Solanaceae family is vast: among the Solanaceae, there are also tobacco and goji berries. So avoiding the aubergine and then eating the goji berries, which then dehydrated should have more concentration of antinutrients (precisely, of alkaloids), is nonsense. Even the chillies, and all the vegetables of the Capsicum family are solanaceous. There are some species of solanaceae that are toxic to living beings. But these do NOT include the species we eat.
2) Among the accusations against the Solanaceae, their ancient tropical origin , and therefore foreign to our particular ecosystem with a temperate climate: let me understand.
Avocado, coconut and bananas are okay, and tomatoes aren’t?
Say that in our climates potatoes and tomatoes have only been around for a few centuries, and then eaten:
quinoa (practically all South American), dates, tapioca flours, agave syrup, aloe-based products, products with palm oil and rapeseed, vanilla from Madagascar, cocoa from Peru, Colombian coffee, Kamut wheat.
When one says consistency …