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Old 14-11-2012, 09:46 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
David Hare-Scott[_2_] David Hare-Scott[_2_] is offline
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Default Can cats safely eat tomato plants?

Drew Lawson wrote:
In article
"David Hare-Scott" writes:
james_coale wrote:
My understanding is that cats cannot eat tomatoes as they are toxic
and can cause kidney failure, chronic diarrhea, cardiac arrest,
cramping, bloating, gas, chronic stomachaches, and other health
issues.


Why?


I don't kow what else may be involved, but it is my understanding
that tomato greens have a high nicotine content. Injested nicotine
(at least at high levels) is a Bad Thing.


Nicotine certainly is very poisonous but this is the first that I have heard
about nicotine in tomatoes, I doubt very much it is true.

There is lots of stuff on the web about the solanums (tomatoes, potatoes,
capsicums, tobacco etc) being of the same family and being poisonous to some
degree but very little indeed with links to any authoritative papers that
mention tomatoes or cats. Tobacco contains nicotine and potatoes solanine
both of which are toxic but there is much more to this as clearly most of
the time we eat potatoes without ill effect. It seems that tomatoes contain
the alkaloid tomatine but how toxic that is to humans or cats and how much
is in tomato plants (and what part and when) I cannot find yet. There is
much generalisation and little specific data on this topic in popular web
pages.

Tomatoes were considered toxic to humans when first brought to Europe but
now we eat them daily. Were they bred to be less toxic and what we eat
today is different or was it all a baseless scare? I dunno.

David