skin, which is colored with red anthocyanin pigments, a deeper red-purple. Red anthocyanin
pigments get redder in acids and turn bluish in basic (alkaline) solutions.
Cooking reduces the eggplant’s supply of water-soluble vitamins, but you can save the
Bs if you serve the eggplant with its juices.
How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Medical Uses and/or Benefits of This Food
Adverse Effects Associated with This Food
Nitrate/nitrite reactions. Eggplant—like beets, celery, lettuce, radish, spinach, and collard
and turnip greens—contains nitrates that convert naturally into nitrites in your stomach,
and then react with the amino acids in proteins to form nitrosamines. Although some
nitrosamines are known or suspected carcinogens, this natural chemical conversion presents
no known problems for a healthy adult. However, when these nitrate-rich vegetables are
cooked and left to stand at room temperature, bacterial enzyme action (and perhaps some
enzymes in the plants) convert the nitrates to nitrites at a much faster rate than normal.
These higer-nitrite foods may be hazardous for infants; several cases of “spinach poisoning”
have been reported among children who ate cooked spinach that had been left standing at
room temperature.
Food/Drug Interactions
MAO inhibitors. Monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors are drugs used as antidepressants
or antihypertensives. They inhibit the action of enzymes that break down tyramine, a natu-
ral by-product of protein metabolism, so that it can be eliminated from the body. Tyramine
is a pressor amine, a chemical that constricts blood vessels and raises blood pressure. If you
eat a food rich in tyramine while you are taking an MAO inhibitor, the pressor amine can-
not be eliminated from your body, and the result may be a hypertensive crisis (sustained
elevated blood pressure). Eggplants contain small amounts of tyramine.
False-positive urine test for carcinoid tumors. Carcinoid tumors (tumors that may arise in tis-
sues of the endocrine and gastrointestinal systems) secrete serotonin, which is excreted in
urine. The test for these tumors measures the level of serotonin in your urine. Eating egg-
plant, which is rich in serotonin, in the 72 hours before a test for a carcinoid tumor might
raise the serotonin levels in your urine high enough to cause a false-positive test result.
(Other fruits and vegetables rich in serotonin are bananas, tomatoes, plums, pineapple, avo-
cados, and walnuts.)
Eggplant