10/1/2007
This is the month for potato questions. Green-skinned potatoes have the potential to be toxic. As exposure of the tubers to light either before or after harvest increases, the tubers begin to manufacture chlorophyll (remember, they're shoots, not roots). Any kind of light, incandescent, fluorescent, or natural, will cause the reaction. The chlorophyll itself is not toxic but building up along with it is a bitter, toxic alkaloid called solanine. Just because a tuber is green doesn't necessarily mean that it is also toxic, but there is a pretty good correlation between chlorophyll and solanine buildup. The more intense the green, the deeper it will go into the tuber.
Solanine is also one of the toxins in the potato tops, including the SPROUTS, and is found in other solanaceous crops such as tomato, pepper, and eggplant. It's a acetylcholinesterase inhibitor and solanine poisoning is characterized by circulatory and respiratory depression, diarrhea, dilated pupils, headache, loss of sensation, paralysis, shock, stomach pain, subnormal body temperature, and vomiting. A person would have to eat, at one sitting, 4.5 pounds of "normal" potatoes to get the first symptoms of solanine poisoning—drowsiness and itchiness behind the neck. But the greener the potato, the less you have to eat to be poisoned. Don't eat green potatoes, potato sprouts, or potato tops.
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