Sweet Potatoes vs Potatoes

[unspeakablehorror]

One of the major differences between sweet potatoes and potatoes is that you can eat the whole sweet potato plant.  Of course potato plants have quite poisonous leaves and stems like many other members of the nightshade family.  But sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family, and happen to be completely edible.  I recently enjoyed a tofu stir fry with some larger sweet potato sprouts (one had grown to be about a foot long!) and today I am cooking the actual root portion as sweet potato fries.

Comments

[osteophage]

huh. I never knew there were parts of a potato that were poisonous.

[unspeakablehorror]

Oh, yes, very much so. Solanine is the poison in the potato plant, and consuming any significant amount of it has quite unpleasant symptoms. The root can also accumulate the toxin when it starts growing. One sign of this is seeing green inside the tuber. The green itself is not poisonous(it's just chlorophyll), but increased chlorophyll concentrations are indicative of solanine buildup in the tuber itself. For this reason it's recommended to cut off parts of the potato that are green or that have eyes (sprouting portions) before cooking.

Here's some more info:
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/solanine_poisoning_how_does_it_happen

[rugessnome]

I've encountered an apocryphal story about some hapless people on their first time growing potatoes trying to eat the potato tops, getting sick, and swearing off the plant without giving the delectable tubers a chance.

However, I think I've encountered a source or two claiming that they are edible and eaten in Africa or something, only I believe from some search results that this is probably a mistake about what someone meant by "potato" when they refer to its greens.

(Iirc potato berries are poisonous and you probably shouldn't plant them for eventual food because potatoes aren't bred to come true to seed and there's an off chance you'd get undesirable food traits showing up again based on a hybrid's parents)

and yet other nightshades...

[rugessnome]

on the other hand, and seemingly a relatively recent development/discovery as far as being on major sites, tomato leaves are apparently not too particularly poisonous and may probably be enjoyed in herb like quantities (1 lb seems to be cited as approximately the threshold of "might poison an adult")

there's at least one seed company that, if I understand correctly, sells some varieties of nightshade itself because apparently the berries of some cultivars are reasonably edible...

Re: and yet other nightshades...

[unspeakablehorror]

Yes, I've heard this as well! I've heard tomatoes do not contain solanine, but tomatine, which, while still poisonous, is apparently considerably less so. And so tomato leaves could safely be used as a potherb. I haven't tried that yet, but might at some point.

And yeah, I've heard that certain nightshade berries are edible, if you make sure to get the right ones!

[unspeakablehorror]

Yeah, as far as I know potato greens aren't edible. So they could be mistaking that for sweet potato greens (which are both edible and delicious) or the edible greens of some other popular tuber.