Foods That Cause Arthritis Pain: Should You Avoid Tomatoes?

Do a search on the web for the keyword phrase "arthritis tomato" and you'll see a lot of articles and blog posts claiming that anyone who has arthritis should eliminate tomoatoes and other members of the nightshade family (like eggplant and potatoes) from their food list. 

According to webmd.com, which has the most credibility on medical matters among the websites we visited,

"One of the most common diet claims is that eliminating nightshades, which include potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, and most peppers, relieves arthritis. This diet probably isn't harmful, but there are no studies to support it."

The discussion comes up among non-medical authorites on dozens of web pages, and the consensus seems to be that tomatoes are definitely bad for anyone with arthritis.

Here's the basic thinking among some folks who believe you should skip the nightshades.

Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and peppers contain a substance called solanine in their leaves and roots. Solanine is actually a mild toxin--a natural protection against creepy-crawlies that try to invade the plant. Normally, solanine gets neutralized in the human intestines. But it's been demonstrated with some certainty that solanine foods trigger joint pain in certain people. Some researchers believe that arthritis patients may lack the intestinal mechanism that undoes solanine’s toxicity.

So the answer is...there's no real answer. This is probably one of those cases where you have to do some self-analysis: if you have a tomato salad for lunch and your hands ache a couple of hours later, you've got a pretty good clue why it happened.