Darth Tater?

The other night I made baked potatoes, oh and not just ANY baked potatoes.... MY baked potatoes. Which pretty much consists of dumping anything and everything delicious on your spud. We sat down to eat our dinner and Curtis starts to dig in. We are both enjoying our meal and all of the sudden Curtis says,

"Did you pluck all of the eyes out?"

"Well" I said, "They weren't really big. I could barley see them, so I didn't bother"

Curtis looks down at his food and spits it out, "You do know that the eyes are poisonous, right?"

I laughed, "Ha ha, yea...right. Stores would have to put something on the bag if they were poisonous....they couldn't sell them if potatoes made you sick. There definently wouldn't be as many Irish and Polish people if that were true!"

Curtis shakes his head, "Well, um...I'm pretty sure they are, that is what my mom told me."

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"I'm sorry Curtis, but I just don't believe it. Can't be true! I'll prove it...we'll look it up!"

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And sure enough after some searching the web, we found it.... POTATOES CAN BE POISONOUS!

Apparently potatoes, if receive light or exposure to warm or cold temperatures will turn a shade of greenish hue. This will inform you that these little death spuds have released chlorophyll. The chlorophyll itself is not toxic, but with it comes a bitter toxic alkaloid called solanine. With these two thing combined they can cause problems with your circulatory and respiratory system. May cause diarrhea, headache, loss of sensation, paralysis, shock, stomach pain, subnormal body temperature, and even vomiting.

But don't worry your little heads yet; a person would have to eat, in one sitting, 4.5 pounds of potatoes to even get the first symptoms of solanine poisoning; which are drowsiness and itchiness behind the neck. But take into consideration that the greener the potato the less you have to eat to be poisoned and the smaller the child the less they have to eat.

The good news though if you do have some green potatoes you can simply peel it. A peeled potato is completely fine, so don't worry about wasting them. If they are green or have sprouts simple cut them in cubes and make "shake n' bake" taters. Which are a personal favorite of mine.

I hope this information doesn't scare you or keep you for from having those Idahoan Killers on your dinner table. Because potatoes are great for you and easy on the pocket book. But, what can I say...I guess for potatoes it's not easy being green.

How many of you out there already knew this?

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P.S. And just as a side fact, even after finding this information out, we still went down and finished off our dinners. So really it wont even give you a headache if you eat some. :)