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Quitting smoking: 5 foods that contain nicotine
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
10 kg of eggplants contain as much nicotine as one Belomorkanal cigarette.
You don't smoke, lead a healthy lifestyle and even despise people with bad habits? In vain! Nicotine will still find a way into your body.
It turns out that there are vegetables that are popular, recognized as super-healthy and loved by millions of people, which, however, contain nicotine.
Vegetables - cigarettes
Scientists and doctors from Michigan State University conducted a global study on the topic of "Nicotine Content in Vegetables" back in 1993. It is unknown what prompted this unusual work, but the fact is that researchers discovered that nicotine is present in many plants used by humans as food.
As it turned out, ordinary potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants (all plants of the Solanaceaeuch family) contained nicotine in quite measurable quantities. So:
Eggplant
According to the study, 10 g of eggplant contains 1 mcg (micrograms) of nicotine - about the same amount a person gets from three hours of passive smoking. Cigarettes usually contain 1 mg (milligram) of nicotine, which means that a person would have to eat 10 kg of eggplant to achieve this figure. Agree, you need to eat quite a lot of eggplant to achieve the effect of one cigarette!
Cauliflower
Cauliflower (who would have thought it) has 3.8 ng/g of nicotine in 263.4 g of product. This is equivalent to being in a room with a smoker for three hours. Moreover, subsequent scientific research even increased the amount of nicotine in cauliflower - up to 16.8 ng/g.
Potato
Potatoes also contain nicotine, and most of all – in the pulp. Potatoes are almost a champion: 1 kg contains 15.3 ng/g of nicotine, and a person needs to eat only 65.4 grams to achieve the effect of passive smoking.
Potato peel
Potato peels, meanwhile, contain significantly less nicotine, scientists have found: only 4.8 ng/g of nicotine, meaning a person would have to eat 208 grams of potato peels to get the effect of passive smoking from one cigarette.
Green tomatoes
And here is the real winner of the nicotine competition - green tomatoes. This vegetable has the highest nicotine level - 42.8 ng / g Eating only 23.4 grams of tomatoes, you already feel the effect of passive smoking.
Red tomatoes
In 1993, a study showed that ripe red tomatoes contain significantly less nicotine - 4.1 ng/g per kilogram of tomatoes. The effect of passive smoking appears after eating 244 grams of tomatoes.
Tomato puree
And finally, the puree of fresh tomatoes showed a record amount of the drug - 52 ng/g of nicotine. A sip of puree of 19.2 g is equal to passive smoking of one cigarette.