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Topics: Food and Drink, Health, Social Media, Science
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Food and Drink, Health, Social Media, Science
Several vegetables contain small amounts of nicotine but you don't need to vow to become a carnivore anytime soon.
With endless headlines about people being rushed to hospital as a result of vaping too much, some people have resolved to become more health-conscious and begun analysing and reducing their nicotine intake.
However, what many of us might not have realized is it's not just tobacco products and vapes which contain nicotine but other items - even items such as vegetables.
But hard luck if you thought this would be a way to try and get out of eating your greens anytime soon, because it's not quite as scary as it all may seem.
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Nicotine is a chemical which can be highly addictive and dangerous when in high doses.
While the idea of getting addicted to eating vegetables doesn't seem too much of a bad idea in the grand scheme of things, despite - surprisingly - having some nicotine present within them, your favorite veg's nicotine levels fortunately aren't high enough to do you any harm.
But which vegetables have a bit of nicotine that's been hiding within them without you realizing?
Well, prepare to never look at eggplants, tomatoes, cauliflowers, green peppers or your beloved potatoes in the exact the same way again.
Tobacco free nicotine product company Haypp explains: " Most of the foods that contain nicotine are from the plant family known as Solanaceae (also known as nightshades), where the alkaloid can be found.
"In these plants, the nicotine content is measured in micrograms (µg); one million µg equals one gram."
Out of the vegetables above, tomatoes typically contain around '7.1 µg/gram of nicotine' with the nicotine concentration dropping as the tomato ripens.
Green peppers come in second with 'anywhere between 7.7 to 9.2 µg/gram of nicotine' and 'a potato' typically comes in at around '15 µg/gram of nicotine'.
However, potatoes' nicotine concentration can rise to 'around 52 µg/gram' if you decide to mash them up and if you use them when they're still green they could contain 'about 42 µg/gram'.
Cauliflowers contain 'around 16.8 µg/gram' even though they're not part of the nightshades family.
And eggplant is up there at the top with '100 µg/ gram'.
But thankfully, you can go on chomping down your five-a-day without worrying about getting a niccy rush or addiction anytime soon, as Haypp explains it's only a 'trace amount' which is found within the veg and you are 'unlikely to be impacted by the nicotine even if you eat these foods regularly'.
While you'd need to eat over 10kg of aubergine to reach nicotine levels on par with a single cigarette, what happens to the trace amounts of nicotine when you do ingest one of the vegetables listed above?
Thankfully, the teeny tiny levels of nicotine are no match for your body's system in such low quantities, with Haypp explaining when you eat veggies containing trace amounts of the chemical it simply 'travel[s] through your intestines and your body easily digests it'.
A Reddit user shared news of veggies containing nicotine to thread r/todayilearned.
One user joked: "I hope my family doesn't find out they'll start trying to smoke potatoes since cigarettes are so expensive."
Another added: "Thats why I'm sways eating fries."
And someone else reminded: "And before people go crazy over it, there's a literal buck-ton more in tobacco products."