Are sprouted potatoes safe? | Hacker News Reader

Are sprouted potatoes safe?

poison.org

165 pointsmooreds171 comments

I'm not sure if my household is immune to potato poisoning or if you need an insane amount of bad potatoes to be affected, but I sadly feed my family month old potatoes quite often. I do peel them (as I do 90% of the time when I make any potatoes). I do pop off any sprouts (wouldn't this be common sense?). And I do "peel out" or cut off any blacking bits on the potato (again wouldn't this be common sense?). And if any potatoes are truly moldy I just toss them.

Who is eating potatoes that are so far gone that they are getting sick from them? When a potato is bad, you KNOW it by it's funky smell.

Oh and I store my potatoes and onions in the same container until for days or weeks.

Month old? If you’re in Niagara, you’re eating several month old potatoes in March.

It's amazing how much food the U.S. (and most countries) will throw away over the minuscule chance of a stomach ache or diarrhea.

Fair enough. But I meant "month old for my house"

I though this was common sense... first check if it's not really soft, and if it's not, just cut peel and remove the dark spots, and then eat the rest.

Exactly

Potatoes keep for months if stored properly, which means in a cool, dark place and still covered in soil.

Unfortunately supermarkets prefer to sell washed potatoes in transparent plastic bags sitting around in bright lights, which is just about the worst possible way to do it.

Still covered in soil? That’s interesting, hadn’t heard that before. Kind of funny to think of keeping a box of dirt in your kitchen to store the potatoes in.

I think he's just referring to regular unwashed potatoes.

These absolutely do keep much better than the washed ones.

After 32 years in the USA, I am still amazed that I have never, ever seen what Brits call "new potatoes" sold commercially anywhere. These are typically dug right out of the ground early in potato harvest season, and not cleaned. I've searched farmers markets and food coops ... nothing.

Same in Germany. The potatoes with dirt on them are "the good stuff." Another huge difference: In Germany, it is illegal to sell eggs that have been washed. In the US, it is illegal to sell unwashed eggs.

Indeed. Interestingly, egg washing involves some tradeoffs. If they are washed, they are safe to handle but the cuticle is eroded so they must be refrigerated. Unwashed eggs can be kept unrefrigerated for some time, but the shells must be treated as a raw food item.

Sounds like as long as you're mandating one or the other you're making the right decision. Being able to know how to handle food is important.

Iirc some US states had rules about moving soil across state lines. Unwashed products packed in dirt may have once been at risk of spreading unwanted pests from one state to another. These rules may still be on the books.

When I worked for a gardening company, we charged extra fees shipping to Hawaii, because we had to wash the roots of the plants. They had regulations about mailing dirt.

My parents used to buy a huge bag of potatoes that came in a brown paper bag.

https://www.newworld.co.nz/shop/product/5045696_ea_000nw?nam...

Like this but I believe it was 10kg And kept in that bag in the pantry. They lasted forever (few months minimum).

The ones I would buy in Singapore were washed in clear bag I had to keep in the fridge that lasted like 2 weeks :(

Edit: bug > buy

Plastic bags are the worst for potato storage. If the potatoes look fresh, rip large holes in the bag and lay flat in a dark place. If they aren’t really fresh, remove them, wash them and put them in something with good airflow like a colander.

I have never tried stroking potatoes with a layer of dirt but seems plausible.

a rotten potato isn't the same as a green potato. a green potato will look and feel fine.

Green color is blight. It is the part of a potato exposed to the sun.

The toxic part of potatoes is the solanine.

Which starts to be present when the potatoes start turning green.

Potatoes start turning green once they're exposed to light. That's because potatoes are actually just stems of the plant and are thus capable of growing a whole new plant.

So... If you prevent the potatoes from getting green but keeping them in the darkness, then your should be good. Not an advice of any kinds, just a botanist sharing love~

Is there a name for things that grow like potatoes? I'm sure this is a horribly ignorant question, but as someone who's pretty ignorant about plant lifecycles my brain is organised around the seed -> plant -> flower -> fruit(?) -> seed lifecycle familiar to anyone growing a chilli plant or herbs like coriander. I have accidentally grown potatoes in my compost pile and I still struggle to understand how we go from "one potato" to "shitloads of potatoes". I guess because it happens underground it's so mysterious to me.

I think the word you are looking for is "tuber," but if there is a botanist in the house, hopefully they can clear it up. Now I'm curious.

Potatoes are stem tubers. Sweet potatoes are probably the best known root tuber in the US; cassava is also a root tuber and better known worldwide.

But, the term the GP is looking for is "stolon" I think.

Potatoes do have seeds.

When you cut up a potato and get 4 new plants it's like taking a cutting from a tree.

"Root vegetable" is the common (non-botanical) one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolon - they're pretty common, but yes potatoes are somewhat rarer in growing underground.

Keep in mind they also still grow "normally" from seeds; there are true "potato fruits" (completely inedible due to the solanine) produced from flowers that contain seeds which grow new potatoes. It's just not economical to grow them this way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_fruit

I'm not sure what the correct translation would be (I'm Slovenian), but it's something like differentiated stolom or just stolom. Basically it's an asexual reproduction. Thus in a way you're eating undeveloped babies. :D

Here's a pretty cool thing to think about:

An apple is a grandchild of the tree.

Thus the saying an apple doesn't fall far from the tree would, correctly speaking, mean that the person is just like their grandparent and not just like their parent.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7417869/

In haven't done the math myself but my understanding from a summary I read (back can't find now of course) is that you'd have to eat an absurd amount of green potatoes (specificly the skins) to get near the dose required for ill effects. Don't feed a child or a dog a bag of green potatoes and if you're worried about inflammation yourself, just peel the potato.

What I'm trying to understand from your comment: do you think that people haven't died from potato-based solanine poisoning ("I haven't done the math myself..."). It's rare but it happens even if you don't eat massive amounts of potatos.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine

It seems like most of the fatalities were related to food shortages, ie people eating very bad potatoes they wouldn't have normally eaten. Alkaloids have a strong bitter taste that makes it difficult to consume enough of them to do harm. Unless you're starving.

My point was just that concentrations in a normal potato, that's turned a little green on the counter are far below anything you need to worry about. If you want to be especially cautious, peel it. But it's a bit of waste to throw them away.

Definitely don't eat the sprouts, or the greens of any nightshade.

Even nightshade greens are overhyped on risk level. The Joy of Cooking used to have tomato greens as stuffing in various recipes; you have to eat a large amount for it to be actually a problem.

Don't know exactly why but suspect that some ppl don't metabolise potatoes well and get very tired after eating them with a meal

This used to happened to me after I visited a favorite restaurant of mine. After I ate there I was so tired I had to rest for a few hours. It turns out it was the amount of white rice I ate there relative to my everyday. Rice was always a big part of the meal.

It's commonly referred as a carb or sugar crash. Formally, it's called "Reactive hypoglycemia." It can hit anyone. People have different sensitivity to it but it can really tire you out when it hits.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/expe...

Or small women.

My maternal family is full of fully grown adults less than 5'2" who weigh less than 90 lbs. My mom, grandma, and even my uncles would not have a good time.

While the lethal dose might be high, mild potato poisoning really sucks. It feels similar to a hangover (headache, nausea, cognitive problems, weird heart rate) and can ruin your whole day. I only learned about potato toxicity after experiencing this several times eating slightly green potatoes for dinner - it was unpleasant enough to ruin my taste for them which is really quite unfortunate

I stopped taking advice like this seriously when my wife became pregnant.

You'd have one group of "experts" saying you shouldn't eat fish, a second saying you should eat as much fish as you can (common advice in Japan, apparently), and a third saying you should just continue as usual[1].

Of course, nobody ever tests their theories because that would risk killing a baby.

If potatoes were actually dangerous, they'd have a big red label on every bag, in 6 languages, telling you to throw them out if they have slight bits of green on them. Perhaps a little colour chart that tells you how green is too green.

Of course, they don't, and the industry hasn't been sued into oblivion, so based on that I'd be shocked if they were as poisonous as this article suggets.

[1] All advice we read recommends pregnant women limit intake of high-mercury fish such as shark and tuna, and I think there might be actual evidence for this one too.

The rules for pregnant women are strange. In some parts of europe they are still told to avoid fresh salad. In north america any visibly pregnant women ordering wine with dinner risks being kicked out of the restaurant. Soft cheese, radishes ... everywhere has thier own social rules about what pregnant people should eat. My grandmother had the best advice: You went to college. You are healthy. Eat whatever your mother ate and your kids will be fine.

Ah 2 things

1) Can eat fish. But not raw fish. In fact when my wife became pregnant I was bombarded with do’s and don’t. In the end after allll the information gathered, the gyno explained:

“Don’t eat raw foods like fish and salad. Salad is the most common cause of food poisoning in restaurants. And raw fish can contain parasites that can make you sick. The objective is to reduce your chance of getting food poisoning because it’s a huge loss of fluids and that could be bad for the baby.”

2) DHA is important for the growth of the baby. I forget exactly why. But that gets complicated because you can’t take cos liver oil as that can be harmful. You want fish oil that’s from fish meat, not liver. But it’s harder to come by and the dosage often exceeds recommendations. So in Taiwan atleast they suggest you take DHA from seaweed.

(Going through all this right now again with the 2nd one on the way)

Have you looked into the primary evidence for any of the things you've said?

More often than not, most of the stuff I've read that doesn't pass the common sense "sniff test" tends to be based on ridiculously flimsy evidence.

Raw fish consumption in pregnancy is actually recommended in certain countries (Japan being the most notable one). The salad thing is not something I've heard, but a quick Google search shows sources from Singapore, the UK and Australia (except for NSW, for some reason?) all claiming it's perfectly safe.

Going a bit further, the egg thing is based on a single case from the 1950s, follow-up studies on women who got the chicken pox vaccine while pregnant shows that they had a _lower_ incidence of varicella-induced miscarriage, and there's also no evidence that children will get sick if you make their formula using properly treated tap water from a metropolitan source. People in Spain and Italy regularly have a glass of wine with dinner while pregnant; they just don't get shitfaced and everything is OK.

I don't know why all of this pleasure-sucking, stress-inducing bullshit "advice" is accepted by anyone, but I suspect it wouldn't last long if men were the ones who got pregnant.

I've never know someone to be particularly more prone to food poisoning from eating something fresh like a salad?

In the US there are frequent recalls on lettuce usually romaine or packaged salads for salmonella or some other bacteria. Example of most recent: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...

Its not about the ingredients, its about whether they are cleaned and the fact that there is no heat/acid/denaturing to kill the agents causing food poisoning

So in regards to raw fish. Back when I had my first daughter I asked our Japanese co workers who said no way to eating raw fish. It must be cooked. Or if you do eat it, it must be with REAL wasabi. (This is when I discovered that wasabi we get is fake!)

The salad thing appeared to be true. It’s because salad is often not washed properly or prepared with bare hands not washed properly. It’s more likely to cause food poisoning than chicken…

We ditched a lot of other myths. There was no way my wife was going to drink only hot drinks in singapore. (We were told not to drink cold drinks)

My wife had really bad morning sickness and we were told not to have junk/fried food. But the only food she didn’t throw up was steak and McDonald’s.

Still washed hair / haircut, ate watermelon, didn’t do confinement properly. Etc

At the end of the day most of its rubbish or a valid warning. But nothing to be stressed about.

> Raw fish consumption in pregnancy is actually recommended in certain countries (Japan being the most notable one).

No, it's common knowledge in Japan that you don't eat raw fish when pregnant.

I don't know why some English websites claim otherwise... all Japanese sources I see agree with me, e.g. this one, supposedly doctor-reviewed: https://woman.mynavi.jp/kosodate/articles/7089

Half of pregnant advice isn’t based on serious research, as knowingly harming a foetus to disprove a claim is out of question. We only get “large scale of absorbing X for decades can have bad consequences” levels of granularity.

On “safe” diets, you have the same thing happening for diarrhea, where what’s supposed to be safe food will heavily change depending on culture and what most of the population is assumed to be eating everyday. In France cheese if said to be fine outside of raw and some special cheese (like Roquefort), lean meat is recommended with potatoes, cabbage etc., bread is considered OK, where as you point out Japan recommends lean fish and other local vegetables, bread is out, cheese as well.

Considering everyone’s gut env. is different, it makes sense that what is safe and not actually has wild individual variations and generic advice is to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

You can know most things do to chemistry and then there are places you can test the theory. For example night-shade vegetables contain solanine which people believed caused inflammation and increased arthritis pain. Some people do get pain from eating night shades and those people just avoid them. It just isn't a universal truth.

https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/nut...

> Of course, they don't, and the industry hasn't been sued into oblivion

I wouldn’t use that as evidence. Plenty of stuff is dangerous but doesn’t have such labels. Heck any corner can be fatal. Any electric appliance can burn your house down. These are not rare events, it just depends on how many loud people notice.

You should consider listening to official advises backed up by real science instead. See here for an example: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you....

Just cut the roots and spots out. That’s why you have the little knife on the vegetable peeler. I’ve never seen a green potato in my life, I’d probably just cut all the green away, maybe that’s what happens when you don’t keep them in a dry place, like outside of a potato sack.

> That’s why you have the little knife on the vegetable peeler

I call that part the gouger

Or plant it, if it's a decent size, it can yield over 1lbs of potatoes in 3 months. In my area it's low maintenance. If you have limited space, I've had 5 lbs worth in a 15 gallon bag, it has about the same footprint as an office chair.

Without trying hard (ie: just burying some buds/ears in soil, no hilling or anything), I got 3lb out of a 5 gallon construction bucket of enriched soil (ie: thirds of dirt, peat moss and compost)

I’ll probably do a few more buckets, but kale, tomatoes and peppers get me more value than potatoes.

Just throwing cut potatoes into my compost heap yields way more potatoes than I personally need.

Is this for real?? Is it that easy? I'd like to try that

It works for me. Into a resting (no longer hot) compost I just bury some cut fingerlings and wait a bit.

Definitely happens.

Composting guides tell you not to compost raw potato peels because instead of a nutrient-rich compost pile you'll grow a bunch of potatoes and they'll get much of the good stuff from the pile.

That said, I suppose it would be an easy way to grow potatoes.

Same here. Sprouted potatoes look absolutely horrible but I can't bring myself to throw out a bag of potatoes just because they look awful. Just cut away and boil or bake. It even creeps me out to even hold sprouted potatoes. I wonder what is it about sprouted potatoes that repulses people so much.

To be fair, the sprouts look like worms crawling out of the potato. I guess it's a good thing we find them repulsive, since they're poisonous.

The sprouts probably trigger heuristics for avoiding food with fungus growing on it.

Green is chlorophyll, which happens if they are in light, mostly. Chlorophyll itself isn't bad, but apparently the light also a accelerates the development of the alkaloids at issue, so it's a signal of unsafety.

No matter how much care I take to store Russet potatoes, or other potatoes, they always grow sprouts after a few days. I store them in a paper bag, in my laundry room where it is cold and dark (and the dryer, which I don't use often, exhausts outside).

Yet when I buy them at the grocery story, I see no sprouts.

Given the time it takes to get from the farm to the grocery store, no doubt these potatoes have been sprouting during their journey. Does the grocery store remove the sprouts before they put them out for sale?

I don't think the grocery store picks through the bags, but they (or a directly previous step) may break open 'bad' bags, sort them, and place the remaining good potatoes on the plain-air shelf.

It's probably stored in a "controlled atmosphere" for some duration before getting to your grocery store.

> There was almost complete sprout inhibition, low weight loss and maintenance of a healthy skin for all cultivars stored in 9.4% CO2 with 3.6% O2 at 5°C for 25 weeks. When tubers from this treatment were stored for a further 20 weeks in air at 5°C the skin remained healthy and they did not sprout.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02358471

It's possible that the controlled atmosphere is held as shortly as possible (ie: some of the warehousing is just done at certain temperatures without the gas control).

I figured you need to leave them out some place with lots of light lol.

You're doing it wrong ;) Potatoes will sprout if they are in higher temperatures and they are in the dark.

Keep them in the fridge or in the light

They'll turn green when stored in a bright place for long. The green parts contain more toxins.

Does not sound like good advice…

> Toxicity is increased by […] low storage temperature, and storage in bright light.

They use sprout inhibitors on large scale potato growing, which are effective in my area (we can keep most potatoes for over a month before there are any sprouts). If you tend to buy from farmers markets, there is a greater chance of them not using inhibitors.

Depending on where you live, they can be in transit for a long period, or you may be in an area that has natural pressures for sprouting.

Short note on sprout inhibitors: https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/10/agricultur....

oh joy: here's a list:

https://www.potatopro.com/about/sprout-inhibitors

wiki links to each one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpropham

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maleic_hydrazide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_as_a_plant_hormone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvone

Chlorpropham was just banned in UK/EU. Still in use in USA. "The study also showed that peeling removed 91–98% and washing 33–47%."

I had a relative involved with a study on pesticide removal. Unfortunately, unless you're using a wire brush, the pesticide isn't coming off your fruit.

This is so depressing, wtf are we doing

Making potatoes less toxic? I don't find that depressing...

This is what modern, efficient, large-scale farming is all about. We use fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, to exterminate almost every living organism from the vicinity except for the crop itself.

You would almost certainly starve if you tried to eat only things that have been grown without any such chemicals. Most "organic" type of certifications do not blanket prohibit them.

From my upper posts, it seems like 'organic' only permits ethylene gas for potatoes. As it's a simple gas, I'd have less worry about it.

I kinda thought potatoes would be.. uhhh... sacred and not need much for longer-term storage, but I guess I was wrong.

I still don't buy organic, but I like growing my own stuff, even though it's technically not organic since I'll use fertilizer...

> From my upper posts, it seems like 'organic' only permits ethylene gas for potatoes. As it's a simple gas, I'd have less worry about it.

There's other chemicals allowed by organic certifications by the looks http://www.extension.uidaho.edu/publishing/pdf/cis/cis1120.p.... That's just for sprout inhibitors. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides while growing are permitted too.

> I kinda thought potatoes would be.. uhhh... sacred and not need much for longer-term storage, but I guess I was wrong.

Sacred? Possibly to some. Shelf life is a significant cost concern for most fresh foods though.

> I still don't buy organic, but I like growing my own stuff, even though it's technically not organic since I'll use fertilizer...

Organic certifications don't prohibit the use of fertilizer.

By sacred, I meant it wouldn't need sprout inhibitors because it naturally stores well.

sure, but I'm using plain Miracle Gro

> I store them in a paper bag

Does the bag have lots of holes? There needs to be lots of ventilation. You can also use a mesh net bag (the same bag bunches of onions come in) or just mound them in a bowl. Wash and scrub them before use.

> in my laundry room

Put a hygrometer in that room (you can buy a pack of 20 little battery-powered hygrometers from Amazon for $10). If the humidity is above 50, it's too humid. If you don't have another dark dry room, you can put a dessicant in the room to absorb humidity.

Now I use brown paper bags I get at the grocery stole, without any holes. I did not notice any success with mesh. Maybe I will try it again.

Are you storing them with onions? Onions give off gas that indices sprouting.

Do you store onions near them? I was having the same issue and it's because I also stored my onions on the same shelf.

"consumption of moderate quantities of potato tops (2-5 g/kg body weight/day) is unlikely to represent an acute health hazard to humans"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8655092/

So if i take the upper end and the standard winter weight of a male 12 or above (as per Transport Canada weight and balance calculations: https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/reference-centre/advisory-c...) of 96.2kg we're looking at thats 481g of green potatoes (or 1.06042lbs for the Americans out there). I don't know about you, but that's a hell of a lot.

More - that study is about the tops i.e. leaves, which are not widely eaten.

... way too many significant figures...

> (as per Transport Canada weight and balance calculations: https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/reference-centre/advisory-c...) of 96.2kg

That number includes passenger + baggage. The table suggests subtracting 5.9kg to get to passenger only, which still strikes me as very heavy standard weight. I much prefer the XKCD[0] rule of thumb: lady 60kg, dude 70kg.

[0] https://xkcd.com/526/

Yeah i like that. Either way, that’s more green potatoes than i think I’ve ever had in one place at a time.

> Now the month-old potatoes are green and have little sprouts growing out of them.

The month old potatoes do not change colour. If they are green than they were green before. They are safe to eat if you remove the green part (which is sour). Sprouts are ok, you just need to remove them and when they are grown it is pretty hard. Basically at the end you need a completely yellow potato to have something edible.

I have seen it many times with my own eyes that potatoes turn green on sides exposed to light. This is mostly not related to sprouting which happens when they are in a warm place.

To light or sunlight ? I have never seen a potato turn green in basement although there is a little light.

I grew up on potatoes from the farm. Tons had small sprouts on them by the time spring came around, we cut them off, ate them, nothing bad ever happened.

I have also eaten sprouted potatoes my whole life, without ever experiencing adverse effects.

The thing to do with a sprouted potato is to put in the soil, and then after some time, you've got two kilos of potatoes that taste just slightly different than the potatoes from the original bag, but are just fine anyway.

Doing this is even more fun if you have grade-schooler kids who can do the digging for you.

or keep them in a jar with water for a while! potatoes are beautiful plants :)

> You're better off tossing potatoes that have turned green or grown sprouts.

Jeez no wonder there is so much food waste. Peel off a green part. What's the worst that can happen "vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea", I've never heard anyone have trouble like this from potatoes, I'm sure it happens but no need to waste when people are starving.

Starvation is like 99% a logistics issue and 1% a food quantity issue.

A more people getting sick from eating green potatoes in the u.s. or Europe isn't going to cause any less people to starve in developing nations.

Exactly. I badly need food, and I live in a major US city, but I can't get to it because I can't leave my house to go to a food bank. There is a ton of food there, it's just a logistical problem for me.

If you want to name the city, someone here might be able to connect you with help.

Vomiting and diarrhoea can, and will, kill you. I have personally had a particularly bad bout of food poisoning (unrelated to potatoes) where I was dehydrating to the point it was affecting kidney and liver function, and I needed a few litres of fluids IV.

IF you're in a wealthy country and have alternatives, potatoes are cheap enough they're not worth the risk, however small. If you are in such a bad situation that you're at risk of starvation, green/sprouted potatoes might be worth the risk, but you're also taking a genuinely dangerous gamble.

I've had vomiting and diahrea and they didn't kill me. So that's a counter example. I also eat sprouted potatoes occasionally and have never experienced so much as a negative thought.

Fair enough. Let's remove personal anecdotes from the equation then, and look at the big picture.

According to the WHO, diarrhoeal diseases are, world-wide, the second biggest cause of death for children under the age of 5, after only respiratory infections. That's approximately 3 deaths per 1000 births. For Somalia specifically, it's over 13 per mille, for Nigeria it's around 10.

By comparison, that number is instead around 0.01 deaths per mille in western Europe and the US. To really put it into perspective, in aggregate across all causes of death, the US has an infant mortality rate of 6.5 per mille. Let that sit with you for a moment: Take all the small children that die in the US in any given year. Now double that number. Now imagine they all died to to a diarrhoeal disease. That is how much diarrhoea can kill.

What do you mean by food waste?

Most plants grow and then die and rot. We never had any intenton to eat them. It's not particularly tragic.

In America, we subsidize the overproduction of food. This means that we grow more food than we eat. Food waste is exclusively a property of this relationship. Whether you throw it away from your kitchen or the grocery throws it away only matters for your personal expenses.

Waste from the point of view of the human labor and non renewable natural resources (e.g. fertilizer, fossil fuels) expended to bring the food to your hands.

So you oppose the subsidies for the overproduction of food and concede that this has nothing do with consumption habits then.

As a kid, I lived in a part of the world where we did not buy potatoes in the supermarket. We harvested them in autumn and stored until next summer, storage was a basement (cool, dry, dark place). By the spring it inevitably sprouted, we had to remove sprouts and sort out rotten ones (usually done only once). No one ever got sick from sprouted potatoes, that is the most ridiculous thing that I heard. Green potatoes are those that were exposed to light, people said it's not good to eat, but I guess you would have to eat a lot of them to see the effect.

I think this is a perfect example of why there is so much bad "logic" in nutrition science. Everything in this article may be true (potatoes with sprouts have a higher concentration glycoalkaloids), but there is 0 evidence that is something any human actually needs to worry about, especially given the other comments in this thread.

It's similar to the bad advice that was prevalent in the US for decades that eggs are bad for you. Thinking was just basically "People with high cholesterol are at greater risk of coronary disease, and egg yolks have a lot of cholesterol, thus, egg yolks bad." When they did actual studies, they found this to be nonsense for the vast majority of people because eating more eggs did not raise their serum cholesterol levels.

Did you see the "This Really Happened" sidebar next to the article? Sure it's anecdata at best, but certainly worthy of some concern if true.

And too add to this, dietary intake of cholesterol in general has less of an effect on serum cholesterol levels then people realise. This is especially true for eggs iirc due to the how the cholesterol is found within them.

Anyway, cholesterol is an indicator, not a cause. If you do stuff to add cholesterol to your bloodstream, you just muddy the signal. Your liver produces cholesterol according to what it perceives a need for.

Source?

Here is a cohort study of 521,120 participants recruited between 1995 and 1996 and prospectively followed up until the end of 2011:

''intakes of eggs and cholesterol were associated with higher all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality. The increased mortality associated with egg consumption was largely influenced by cholesterol intake. Our findings suggest limiting cholesterol intake and replacing whole eggs with egg whites/substitutes or other alternative protein sources for facilitating cardiovascular health and long-term survival.''

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33561122/

I wonder if the whole egg eaters also ate more bacon?

yeah the nitrates would be a quicker way to cancer in my intuitive brain

It could even be the teflon from the frying pan.

This is a suggestive study, but far from conclusive on its own.

Given the popular zeitgeist around egg consumption, it’s quite likely that those who eat eggs are also more likely to engage in other riskier or unhealthful activities.

This study seems to try to look for confounds, but in the end is a self-report study, which (again given common attitudes around egg consumption) means that I’d be looking for huge effect sizes to believe there is something real going on.

As it is, you’d have to believe that people who care about health but eat eggs anyway are less than 7% more likely to underreport their cholesterol consumption. (Number made up, but the effect size in the paper is about a 7% greater risk.)

I was specifically referring to when the US, relatively recently, changed the dietary guidelines regarding egg consumption: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/eggs-fats...

Potatoes are nightshades. It is entirely reasonable that in some situations they might be bad for you.

We stored them for months in root cellars before electric refrigeration.

Root cellars are better for storing them than refrigerators.

So one of those Egg Council creeps got to you too, huh?

They provide 2 cases at the bottom, one of a woman getting slightly ill and one of a man being hospitalized for 3 days. Sources not listed but I don't really have any reason to believe poison.org is fabricating stories about potato based sickness.

I mean growing up in a third world country we did have a grandma’s knowledge kind of a thing about sprouted potatoes and avoiding them if it’s sprouted quite a bit. However we also were taught to remove the “eyes” and the side of the potato that’s turned green and the rest is completely edible. I’ve been doing this for decades and haven’t been even remotely sick even once.

My grandparents owned a food processing business until the early 90s. One of their main businesses was slicing potatoes to be used in grocery store potato salad.

They had a room dedicated to removing eyes before running them through the peeler.

From the stories I've heard they'd use anything. Potatoes where half the bag is rotten mush, sure. Rotten potatoes where the sprouts have big enough spuds to process, use the sprouted spuds.

I think those were the extreme cases, since they're stories I've heard, but I doubt any similar facility isn't cutting out eyes and processing them today.

> From the stories I've heard they'd use anything.

Good. There is enough food waste already. People are just overly sensitive.

From experience, a lot of this stuff gets redirected to jail and prison kitchens where the labor is free or cheap. Then those guys get to spend their days cutting out eyes and sprouts and sorting the ones full of maggots out as best they can (they're not 100% effective). And then they get served to the denizens.

[the jail I was at would regularly receive entire 40ft semi trucks filled with wet bags of potatoes that were rotting and covered in flies]

This is a little confusing in terms of how to handle sprouted potatoes - I was always taught that they're fine if you cut off the sprouts. The fact that it says the sprouts are heavy in glycoalkaloids seems to support that. But the only thing it specifically says is to peel before cooking - even there, I'm not clear if that's specifically if they're sprouted or generally a good idea (though potatoes are served so frequently with the skin on that I have to imagine it's not necessary with fresh potatoes at least).

So what's the deal... cut the sprouts and they're fine? Cut the sprouts and peel them and they're fine?

The bit about not storing potatoes and onions together is helpful, though... I always do that. Time to go separate those.

They're localized to the green/sprouted spots. And to a lesser extent the skin.

I'm not sure how the skin changes in the process, but I do know that the white flesh has minimal changes.

According to German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), they provide a more in depth look at it [1]. Fresher potato's are okay with skin on. Damaged, or overly sprouted potato's are not.

[1] https://www.potatopro.com/news/2018/glycoalkaloids-potatoes-...

Cool, thanks... I will peel my sprouted potatoes in addition to cutting off the sprouts from now on. The things you learn from HN...

I'll have to dig through the references, because what I really want an answer to is where the bad stuff is and how safe/risky it is to just cut out those areas while eating the rest.

IE: Take a potato that has sprouted and take samples of different distances from that sprout. It's not like the potato has a circulatory system that moves the bad stuff around.

This would be good to know. I always cut out a safe distance from the sprout. Usually it is black and green. The rest I keep.

This feels like a "reduce your risk to as close to zero from an already ridiculously small risk" article.

I've been cutting bad parts of potatoes off my entire life with no ill effects. If the potato is soft, take off the skin. If the potato sprouts, cut around the sprout (including any off-coloured flesh). After you cook the potatoes, look for any dark spots and cut those away.

> I've been cutting bad parts of potatoes off my entire life with no ill effects.

Another datapoint: I also do that and never experienced problems.

I’ve been eating sprouted potatoes all my life (and I’m Polish, so when I grew up, I’ve probably been eating potatoes 300 days out of a year…) and never had any issues, just remove the sprouts and poke out the black eyes (also peel, I always peel potatoes). I also ate ones that start to go soft, not being firm anymore, they’re totally fine too. When they start smelling bad, that’s when you should not eat them, or when they go green (but the latter is your fault for keeping them out in sunlight, mostly).

For those allergic to the "nightshade alkaloids" (this is a handwave to a biological term I can never remember) the answer is "yes". Mind, for those of us with such a sensitivity or allergy (it's both for me) - a lot of plants are unsafe. (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, goji berries, persimmon, and anything dosed too heavily with neonic pesticides sigh)

And those of us with this issue are fairly rare. Thankfully. The rest of you can enjoy this all!

What do large restaurant chains like McDonald's do with sprouted potatoes?

Chains like McDonald's almost certainly don't cut their French fries onsite, they'd get them delivered already cut and frozen.

In other words, they're probably processed soon after harvest and don't have these issues when frozen.

I've worked in a McDonalds. My experience is outdated by a few years, but I don't think I ever once saw real food prep happening in store. Every ingredient is processed at the factory, sealed up and shipped to the store with timestamps and dates for when it expires and should no longer be used. Even the cookies arrive partially baked, with the store doing a minimal final round of heating, all for efficiency. The store workers are basically just doing final assembly for the vast majority of products, and the fries are certainly no exception.

Eggs? I think the round eggs are still cracked and cooked on site?. The scrambled square ones come pre-made, though, IIRC.

Depends on the menu item. The scrambled eggs arrive plastic sealed, arranged in a 2d array. The eggs for McMuffin's are are a regular egg, cracked open on the spot.

This is correct. McDonalds fries are delivered in a bag, frozen. There are chains that fresh cut their fries, but they definitely advertise it when they do, because it is not the norm. (In-N-Out, Five Guys)

In-N-Out is so infuriatingly proud of doing fries wrong, not parboiling or double frying them, and then crowing about how great it is that they dump just-cut potato into the fryer and serve it to you. Of course you have to pile on a bunch of other stuff to make them good, so the 'secret menu' is essential.

Sometimes putting something in a fridge or a freezer is part of the cooking process, but there's all this stigma around it and bonus points given to things for being "fresh." Fries that get chilled between rounds of cooking are part of what changes them from "deep fried potato" to "french fry".

Five Guys and that peanut oil though.. that's the stuff.

I suspect they pre-boil their fries too. It's the secret to amazing fries.

Yep Places like McCain foods do this on an industrial scale that brings the cost so far down that even McDonalds wouldn't be able to compete with. They're still likely going to be doing so much business that they'll be getting a favorable contract for it but it'd still be silly to build out all of that themselves.

This may be inaccurate now - but a few years ago I stopped at Idahos potato museum. If I remember correctly - the McDonald’s fries are actually a product of a lot of food scientists hard work. There are multiple types of potatoes involved that are turned in to potato product. Those are then mixed together in a specific ratio before they are reconstituted into fry shape. I think even the combination of oils and temperatures are very specific to McDonald’s.

No, they're mostly just cut potatoes. They get a coating with some stuff in it you wouldn't find on homemade fries, and the cooking is of course quite standardized. But nothing like mixing multiple varieties of potato and reshaping them as fries.

You might be thinking of Pringles.

Meanwhile, raw potatoties without skins are definitely poisonous. Back in Bulgaria, if kids wanted to skip school, they would eat some raw potato, get fever, and legimitately get excused.

Potatoes can also disable a car by stuffing its exhaust with one [1] - it's another fun with potatoes kids had back then.

[1]: https://carfromjapan.com/article/car-maintenance/a-potato-is...

This article seems to contradict itself. Near the beginning it says storing at a low temperature can increase toxicity. Then near the end, it suggests storing potatoes in a cool place. Which is it?

I think of low temperature as the fridge. Cool place would be in the shade or in a cabinet.

It's because storing potatoes properly is actually tricky in a house or apartment. At some point I was frustrated that my potatoes were turning green and I did some research. I remembered my grandparents storing potatoes for an entire winter, so it couldn't be too hard. The trick seems to be to store them cool, but not cold. Probably 50s and 60s F (and in the dark). There is no such environment in a typical home unless you have a cold basement or wine cooler.

> The trick seems to be to store them cool, but not cold. Probably 50s and 60s F (and in the dark). There is no such environment in a typical home

That's just slightly warmer than a typical household refrigerator.

I have an inflammatory disorder. Night-Shades cause inflammation is what every doctor told me. If I eat an old soft potato or one with spouts I do not get worse. After looking into it Night Shades are not bad for people with inflammation or arthritis.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321745

This is one of those "life facts" that I wish we were taught in school, because it's potentially dangerous but doesn't seem like it. I learned about it in my 30s when a partner told me to be careful of the green sprouting potatoes I was about to cook.

The green parts are really bitter. I always figured that was the reason you don't hear much about people being poisoned by green potatoes. They taste nasty enough that it's usually just not a problem.

I, for one, am glad this isn’t disseminated widely. There may be a theoretical risk, but it’s minimal, and food waste is a much larger problem. I always eat my sprouted potatoes.

> This is one of those "life facts" that I wish we were taught in school, because it's potentially dangerous but doesn't seem like it.

It really isn’t. You need to eat absurd amounts of stuff you’d not want to eat instinctively (green skin and sprouts). Remove those and there is nothing to be afraid of. On top of that the chemicals in question are very bitter. You wouldn’t eat them even ignoring the visual cues.

Same for courgettes [zucchini] and tomatoes. Yes, the plant has some toxic compounds. No, it’s not really dangerous (though the risk is higher with courgettes than either tomatoes and potatoes, but bad courgettes are very bitter).

I'm literally saying I didn't know I shouldn't eat the green parts for 30 years, and your response is "Remove those and there is nothing to be afraid of." I didn't know to remove them for 30 years!!

Yeah. What I am saying is that they are gross, and bitter. So most likely is, you’d have removed them without knowing a thing about them or, having left them, you wouldn’t have eaten them because the taste would be bad.

And had you eaten them anyway, you’d be in for a mild stomach ache.

Long story short, it is not very dangerous, even if you are completely unaware.

Bad courgettes can get you quite sick with even just a bite or two, I wouldn't minimize the risk there. (And even worse if you e.g. pickle them / use them in a soup which masks the flavor at first.)

Also depends where you live. I used to live in CA never saw a sprout on a potato unless I left it on the counter for a month. Here in FL, potatoes sprout the next day you buy them OR even in the bag at the store. Your best bet in a hot climate is the fridge.

You shouldn’t keep them in the fridge either:

> Toxicity is increased by […] low storage temperature

Potato is a poisonous plant. Only roots are safe to eat. When introduced in some regions of Eastern Europe people actually died eating wrong parts.

With roots, peeling will remove anything remotely dangerous.

A nitpick: Not all tubers are roots, and in particular potato tubers are stems.

When it says sprouted does it mean roots or the above ground bit? Because if they mean the roots then I've nearly poisoned myself all the time.

The sprout (the above ground bit) comes quite a bit before the roots -- the roots actually emerge from the stem itself after it has grown quite tall, not from the potato itself.

"Sprouted potatoes" refers to this initial stem starting to emerge.

You've almost certainly been eating potatoes with the above-ground bit growing. They do look a bit like roots.

But, really, it's not that poisonous unless the potato itself is also bright green.

Alternately, sprouted sweet potatoes are fine and in fact the sprouts can be prepared and eaten. Very tasty

To be clear, sweet "potatoes" are an entirely different genus and species. The similarity is just that both they and Solanum tuberosum produce a starchy edible taproot. It's the Solanum that's the key -- all the members of this genus produce solanine to some degree.

Solanum tuberosum does not produce taproots. Potato roots are fibrous; the tuber forms from the stolon. (Otherwise they would probably not turn green - roots rarely contain much chlorophyll!)

Right, thank you for the correction!

Trace amounts of solanin remain even in the most perfect potatoes. No potato is safe! >:D

i had read somewhere that, while the green part may be poisonous, you'd to need eat like 2kg of pure green part "at once" to be in danger

Not having images in this article should be a crime.

Peel them and boil them. : /

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