30
Some Unusual Characters
The vegetable realm includes a huge range of varieties, many more than could possibly be covered individually in this book. However, several specific families are especially interesting in that they not only have become very popular, commonly used foods, but they also exhibit most unusual traits.
Fungi
The fungi family includes a wide variety of mushrooms, all of which are relatives to molds and yeasts. They are saprophytic plants, which means that they are unable to photosynthesize sugars (unlike other vegetable plants) and therefore must survive on the decaying remains of other organisms. They do this by excreting digestive enzymes, which help to further break down decaying matter.
Some varieties of fungi have a symbiotic relationship with tree roots, the fungi borrowing sugars from the roots and in exchange giving the roots minerals (especially phosphorus).
Unlike the higher seeded food plants, fungi do not contain chlorophyll, nor do they have roots; rather, they have short hairlike filaments called mycelia (singular: mycelium), which make and disseminate spores for future fungi.
The composition of their cell walls also differs from that of the higher plants. Instead of having a cellulose structure, fungi cell walls are composed of chitin, the same chemical complex that makes up the outer skeletons of crustaceans and insects.
Fungi are one of the most primitive species of food. Remains of puffballs have been found in Stone Age settlements. These and many other exotic species of mushrooms have been eaten throughout the world, and still are today. Their meaty flesh is actually the fruit of the fungus; when cooked, it adds a distinct, rich flavor to almost any plant or animal food preparation. This is partly due to the fact that mushrooms are unusually high in glutamic acid, a substance reported to be beneficial to brain and nervous system functions.
Most mushrooms prefer a dark, cool, and damp growing environment. However, once picked, mushrooms do not like moisture; once they get wet, they tend to spoil much more rapidly than if kept cool and dry.
The common white mushrooms often found in grocery stores, though grown in great abundance, are one of the most highly chemicalized plant foods available. The fact that there are so many varieties of mushrooms, some poisonous enough to induce immediate death, along with the fact that mushrooms experience numerous color changes on their road to maturity, has contributed historically to much of the fear and denunciation attending these lowly scavengers.
When considering the use of mushrooms for food, it is important to choose those from a healthy environment—that is, wild or cultivated on healthy soil. Do not let the idea of fungi thriving on decaying matter dissuade you from enjoying what many believe to be one of the most delicious foods available. If you prefer to leave mushrooms out of your relationships with food because of previous experience or taste, okay—but do not be too quick to judge this unusual food.
Bacterial Breakdown
Bacteria, germs, and viruses exist everywhere, and the fact that we are taught by medical science to fear such things has not helped us any in opening up to the idea that some of these particular substances may actually be beneficial to our health. Miso, for example, is simply soybeans, grain, and salt mixed together, then left to ferment and produce bacteria by eating and digesting itself.
Mushrooms, from an energetic perspective, may assist in the absorption and elimination of some types of troublesome bacteria. After all this is what they do in nature: eat bacteria. Numerous studies in Japan have shown that some mushrooms (shiitake, reishi, enoki, straw, oyster, and tree ear) have the ability to interfere with the growth of cancer by supporting the immune system.
The traditional use of mushrooms to help balance meat preparations can be found throughout the world. Meats tend to putrefy once exposed to oxygen; since they thrive on bacteria, mushrooms may actually help reduce and control some forms of harmful bacteria.
This does not mean that eating meat is a bad thing, by the way. Quite the contrary: simply avoiding meat does not mean you will not create harmful bacteria and putrefaction in your digestive tract. Some vegetarian-oriented diets have a tendency to produce more acid fermentation and thus more bacteria from the overconsumption of simple carbohydrates than does heavy meat-eating.
What’s more, overeating itself tends to produce unhealthy bacteria in the body, especially overeating carbohydrates, and cooked mushrooms help to reduce these unhealthy bacteria and other organisms that can disrupt a healthy homeostasis.
On the other hand, mushrooms prefer cool, dark environments, so they also have the potential to induce those kinds of feelings in the eater, especially if one tends to feel shy or inhibited in the first place. They also change color throughout their developmental stages, and this is energetically indicative of emotional volatility in human temperament. When cooked, mushrooms tend to have a cool, damp effect on the human body. Eaten raw, they will have a cold and damp effect.
The Nightshades
The most common nightshade plants used for food are the tomato, potato, eggplant, and bell pepper. These unusual plants, once considered poisonous by many, are relatively new to Europe and North America. They originally came into prominence as ornamental plants. A sight to behold, these beautiful plants decorated many a landscape of European and American homes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The term nightshade derives from nihtscada, meaning “the shade or shadow of night,” an evocative name that refers to the narcotic qualities allegedly exhibited by any of the various flowering plants of the genus solanum.
Their above-average nitrogen content gives this family of plants a strong link to the animal world. Unlike other flowering plants, nightshades contain an imitation of the animal gastrula, the basic reproductive form from which an animal develops. The gastrula in nightshades is located just above the seed bud of the blossom.
Some of the toxic substances found abundantly in commonly eaten nightshades are solanine, glycoalkaloids, and alkamines. The green substance found on many potatoes indicates the presence of solanine, a poison that has been linked to rashes and other skin diseases. Glycoalkaloids have been shown to cause red blood cells to self-destruct in vitro, and alkamines, which are absorbed by the intestines, have been shown to contribute to nervous disorders in humans and animals.
Altogether, these substances found in nightshade plants have been linked with kidney stones, calcium depletion, nausea, abdominal pain and swelling, loss of red blood cells, ulcers, jaundice, rashes, muscle wasting, breathing difficulties, trembling, drowsiness, and paralysis. The most famous negative association of nightshades, though one that is still debated, is with rheumatoid arthritis.
Needless to say, this is a fairly exhaustive list of technically researched symptoms—symptoms that should stimulate some thought as to how much and how often you might want to intimately involve yourself with these foods!
In addition to being highly animated during the cool night hours, the nightshades are not very social plants: they thrive best when growing alone in their own soil, away from other vegetables. They do, however, grow well with their own kind. All of these traits suggest quite interesting behavioral energetics in the nightshade eater. Keep in mind that scientific research based on isolating one or two components from a food does not always mean the whole food is something to be avoided. One could find something toxic in any food if one were to look hard enough.
While harmless in moderate amounts, any of the common nightshades can, when eaten in excess, contribute to:
The latter, on a mechanical level, means the person has a tendency to crave animal products, especially dairy products and red meats. Symbolically, it means the person feels the need for more attention, support, and strength from others; psychologically, these needs often manifest as emotional vampirism.
Potato
The potato originated in the high Andes Mountains of Peru. One hundred and fifty varieties were known by the time of the Spanish invasion. It can grow at elevations of thirteen thousand feet above sea level. A starch-producing plant (yet quite unlike cereal plants, which are seed carbohydrates), the potato is a weak plant with straggling, though somewhat erect, branching stems. The average height of the plant is one to three feet. It can, but rarely does, produce a fruit about three-quarters of an inch in diameter with a greenish color.
Potatoes can be grown almost anywhere, with the exception of low tropical regions. The undergrowth of the potato plant consists of fibrous roots with additional branching stems that become swollen at the tips to form tubers. In winter these tubers—the actual potatoes—survive and the leaves of the plant die. Young shoots then develop from the eyes of the potato, feeding off the mother potato until it withers and dies—truly a self-absorbing, self-satisfying plant with little concern for its mother, other than to suck the life from her until the young become mature enough to sacrifice their own lives to the next generation of young shoots.
This rounded, watery, gutless tuber (not a root) is the second largest cash crop in America, after wheat.
Poisonous alkaloids called solanines appear as a green color on potato skins, particularly when they are exposed to light. The solanine level of most potatoes is about 90 parts per million (ppm), which is about one quarter of the danger level determined by researchers.
The potato has a most unusual history. In 1530, the Spanish conquistadors found the Incas eating tiny potatoes the size of peanuts. They observed the Peruvians first soaking the little potatoes in water and then letting them freeze in the cold mountain air. They then dried them in the sun and proceeded to rub off the skin by walking on them in their bare feet until the tiny potatoes turned black and hard as stones. They were then soaked for three to four days before being cooked in soups or ground into flour to make bread.
These tiny little forerunners of the bloated modern potato were subjected to some serious processing before being considered fit for consumption! Traditional peoples throughout the world have long practiced various methods of detoxifying particular plants, in order to make them edible; potato may very well be one of the earliest examples.
Introduced to France in 1540, potatoes were at first considered an ornamental plant and not yet accepted as a food. Thirty years later, the French forbade the cultivation of potatoes, based on the belief that they caused leprosy. By 1771, most of Europe (with the exception of France) had finally accepted the potato as a food. However, there was still much concern and doubt throughout Europe about the possible dangers of this new food, particularly among the farmers and peasants. In 1663, the Royal Society of England urged the planting of potatoes to prevent famine—a request that was vehemently opposed by the peasants and farmers.
Many believe the Irish were the first to consume potatoes in any substantial quantities. This is probably due to the history-making “potato famine” in Ireland that wreaked havoc among both young and old. This tragedy was largely due to the Irish attempting to replace much of their original cereal agriculture with potato farming. Potatoes did not become the basis of the Irish peoples’ diet until late in the eighteenth century.
However, the Germans were the first big potato eaters. In 1720, Frederick William I imposed on the Prussian peasants (under the threat of draconian punishment) the mandatory planting of potatoes. The peasants, still convinced that potatoes caused leprosy and other skin diseases, refused and pulled the potatoes from the ground. They were then told they had to grow them—or have their ears and noses cut off. Given this set of alternatives, they grew potatoes.
Up until 1770, the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland maintained their stand that potatoes were not good because they were not mentioned in the Bible.
In Elizabethan England, the potato, having not yet reached its bloated condition so common today, was known as being small as a human finger. In Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (act 5, scene 2) this reference occurs: “How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato finger, tickle these together.”
Once accepted, the potato grew in both size and popularity; however, in America potatoes were still not widely eaten until the start of the nineteenth century.
Energetically, potatoes can contribute to mental and physical weakness. The physical effects of excess potato-eating can result in pallor, withering and wrinkling of the skin, skin moles, and rashes. They are very difficult to digest, contrary to popular belief, and contribute to flatulence, intestinal swelling, and the reduction of minerals in the body.
During the 1600s and 1700s, potatoes were thought to weaken the human reproductive cells and thus cause hydrocephalus and general stupidity among those adults and children who ate them. An interesting piece of art by Vincent Van Gogh called The Potato Eaters clearly depicts the debilitating qualities then attributed to potatoes.
Because of the potato’s self-satisfying nature and laziness, it can contribute to mental symptoms of fatigue and drowsiness, scattered thinking, inability to pay attention, mental dullness, simplemindedness, blind allegiance, and blind faith, as well as unthinking devotion to dogma and an overall dull spirit with a lack of creative thinking. It is interesting how red meat, having essentially the opposite qualities, is the most common match for potatoes in developed countries. When one eats compliant potatoes, it is wise to eat them with dominant strong, stabilizing foods (such as meat) to counter some of the weakening effects inherent in the potatoes.
Potatoes are weak plants, susceptible to disease and rapid decay; if eaten in excess, they can foist these qualities on the human immune system. Unlike cereal grain carbohydrates, which have a nourishing and vitalizing effect on the brain, the potato, with its large, expanded, and watery starch molecules, tends to have a weakening effect on the midbrain. This, in turn, stimulates the forebrain to substitute for the usual functions of the midbrain—hence, the manifestations of blind idealism and a lack of common sense.
While potatoes may be lacking in the areas of strength and endurance, they do have positive qualities. They are a supportive food for conditions of tension accompanied by excess heat and dryness. They are effective at absorbing salt and can be very helpful for reducing the sodium in tissues of people who have consumed far too much salt. Referring back to the character types of dominant and compliant, potatoes are one of the most compliant foods.
Tomatoes
Like potatoes, tomatoes have their origin in South America, most likely Peru. The Peruvians gathered the wild fruit in season; at the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru, this fruit was yellow in color and the size of a cherry.
Except for Peru and possibly some other places in South America, the tomato was regarded strictly as an ornamental plant and was introduced as such to Italy, France, England, and Portugal shortly after the close of the sixteenth century by visiting Spaniards. The Italians appear to have been the first to use the tomato as food, and even for them, it took about two hundred years of growing it as a curiosity and ornamental plant before they did. By 1827, the use of tomatoes as a food had increased throughout Europe, yet both England and France were still hesitant and had not yet fully accepted the fruit.
The Italians called the yellow tomato “golden apples,” a title later mistranslated by the French to “love apples,” accompanied by the myth that tomatoes had aphrodisiac qualities. Perhaps this is what finally influenced the French to accept the tomato.
In America, the first tomatoes were grown as ornamental plants around 1832. Americans had heard the French were eating them and by 1844, they had begun to increase in popularity. Still, the tomato did not find its place in America’s kitchens until World War I. It wasn’t until 1929 that the Bureau of Home Economics launched its promotional campaign that claimed the ideal diet for Americans should include fifty-five pounds of tomatoes per person per year.
The tomato is actually a fruit; however, in 1893 the Supreme Court, by decree, ruled that because it was used as a vegetable, it should be considered one for trade purposes. It is ironic that nearly one hundred years later, the Reagan administration raised a howl in the press by its claim that tomato catsup and French fries (themselves not yet renamed in a puerile fit of political-rectitude as “freedom fries”) qualified in school lunches as “vegetables.”
The tomato plant is a weak-stemmed herbaceous plant that, under natural conditions, forms a spreading, straggling bush about two to four feet high. The leaves are extremely toxic and have been known to cause arthritis and even kill grazing livestock. In addition to containing poisonous alkaloids, the leaves and other green parts of the plant have golden yellow glands that give off a most unusual odor and toxic substance when touched.
The tomato’s growing pattern is one in which the plant shuts itself off from its environment. This has often reminded me of the pattern of individuals suffering from a degenerative illness who also can develop a tendency to isolate themselves from their natural environment. This may not be as subjective an observation as it seems: blood crystallization studies done in Germany have shown that cancerous blood and the juice of fresh tomato reveal a striking structural similarity.
This unusual plant, like its relatives in the nightshade family, does have positive qualities: it can help to reduce excess fat accumulations in the body, and can have a cooling effect on an overheated metabolism. Another beneficial property is that they can calm and clear excess heat from the liver.
It is not unusual for a woman in the early stages of pregnancy to crave tomatoes: the fruit has the uncanny ability to deplete the body of minerals, and eating tomatoes during the early stages of pregnancy can stimulate the release of calcium into the bloodstream, making it readily available to the growing fetus. The mother, however, does not benefit—unless she has an abundance of calcium reserve.
Tomatoes keep best in a cool, dark place and this preference can manifest energetically in the human who consumes large quantities as a cold, dark, and reclusive character. It is a soft and fragile fruit that bears little resemblance to other more commonly known fruits that spend their daylight hours thriving on sunlight. Like other nightshades, it has been strongly linked to arthritis and skin diseases, especially the seeds, with their mucilaginous coating.
In addition to making one feel cold and dry, tomatoes also contribute to stiffness in the joints and muscles. Its juicy, acidic flesh and seeds have an almost immediate effect of thinning the blood. Unlike potatoes, which give the skin the appearance of a loose, withered look, white with pallor, the tomato gives the skin a dark, dirty, sallow, and tight appearance.
Aubergine (Eggplant)
The eggplant is native to Arabia and more specifically to India. The plant derives its name from one of the original species of eggplant, which was small, white, and shaped like a hen’s egg. It was introduced to England as an ornamental plant in 1587, but not then used as a food. During the late 1700s, the French claimed it provoked fever and epilepsy.
The United States got its first introduction to the eggplant as an ornamental plant in 1806; it was not recognized here as food for well over a century, until late in the 1800s, when the famous restaurant Delmonico’s made it a regular part of the menu.
Once called the “mad apple” because it was rumored to cause insanity if eaten daily for a month, the eggplant has yet to play a major role in American cuisine. Its greatest devotees are southern Italians and Arabs, especially Syrians and Turks.
Eggplant has been linked with cancer in that its slightly mutagenic qualities have caused genetic damage to cells in vitro. Nigerians once regarded it as a contraceptive or natural abortive. Its mucilaginous texture can be helpful for constipation, and it can assist in the reduction of abdominal swelling. It can also help to balance fatty foods, especially cheeses and cream. It has a cold and damp nature, and like potatoes and tomatoes, energetically affects the blood and bones.
Peppers
The most common peppers are the bell varieties. These are available in numerous colors and sizes and should not be confused with the table spices—black and white pepper, which are not nightshades. The two families of peppers are the piper from the family piperaceae which includes the seed varieties of black and white pepper (both non-nightshade), and the capsicum of the family solanaceae, which includes bell peppers and hot peppers (both nightshades). The latter are native to the tropics and the highlands of Latin America.
Like the rest of the nightshades, with the exception of their country of origin, peppers originally were regarded as ornamental plants and only later accepted as food plants. Again, with the pepper we find a weak and delicate plant that was once considered difficult to grow until hybridization made it more convenient.
Some of the more traditional techniques for preparing peppers involve subjecting the plant to a whole gauntlet of steps, not unlike the original Andean method of making potatoes run the gauntlet. The Italian method of preparing roasted peppers is a good example: the peppers are salted, literally burned to a black crisp, and the skins and seeds are then removed before eating.
Peppers are hollow and crisp with the usual acrid taste found in other nightshades. Energetically, they contribute to feelings of cold and emptiness. One may not experience the energetics of peppers in the way one would normally experience potatoes or tomatoes, yet all four of the commonly used nightshades have similar overall qualities, differing mostly in textural details. Some peppers are spicy, giving them a unique quality among nightshades.
The potato, when cooked, is soft and mushy and has a loosening effect on the intestines and nervous system. The pepper, when cooked, also has a weakening and loosening effect on the intestines, yet is not as soft and smooth as the potato, unless it is peeled. It tends to have a more abrasive effect on the intestines. Peppers can also be supportive in stimulating appetite, circulation and digestion, and to promote urination.
Essentially then, the nightshades represent a phenomenon that exists somewhere between the plant and animal kingdoms, and the relationship you choose to have with them as foods requires a little thought—and a lot of common sense.