Can You Still Eat Sprouted Potatoes? Food Safety Explained
The potato is one of the foods people enjoy in daily life, also known as tudou, shanyao dan, yangshanyu, etc. It is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Solanum in the nightshade family, rich in nutrients and delicious in taste, and together with wheat, rice, corn and sorghum it ranks among the world's five major crops, and has now gradually developed into a staple food crop. Let us take a look below at whether sprouted potatoes can be eaten!
Can sprouted potatoes be eaten?
Sprouted potatoes are toxic and cannot be eaten. Potatoes contain a toxin called “solanine”. Generally, mature potatoes contain very little solanine, and eating them will not cause poisoning. However, in immature potatoes whose flesh is purplish or green, or in sprouted potatoes, especially in the sprouted parts, the toxin content is high, and eating them easily causes poisoning. Symptoms of poisoning include itching in the throat, heat and pain in the chest, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, etc. Moldy or rotten potatoes have an increased toxin content and also contain a putrefactive toxin, which is likewise harmful.
What to do in case of potato poisoning?
1. After potato poisoning, immediately induce vomiting and wash the stomach with strong tea or a 1:5000 potassium permanganate solution.
2. For mild poisoning, drink plenty of sugar-salt water to replenish fluids, and appropriately drink vinegar water to neutralize the solanine.
3. For severe vomiting and abdominal pain, atropine 0.3 to 0.5 mg may be given by intramuscular injection.
4. In severe cases of potato poisoning, rush the patient to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Prevention of potato poisoning
1. The vast majority of potato poisoning occurs in spring and early summer, because spring is damp and warm, and potatoes are not stored well, which easily causes sprouting. Therefore, strengthening the storage of potatoes and preventing sprouting is the fundamental guarantee for preventing poisoning.
2. It is forbidden to eat sprouted potatoes or potatoes with purplish-green flesh. For potatoes that have sprouted only slightly and have not deteriorated, the sprouted eyes can be completely dug out, the purplish-green parts of the flesh removed, and then soaked in cold water for 30 to 60 minutes so that the residual toxin dissolves in the water, then washed clean.
3. Add vinegar when cooking potatoes, and cook them thoroughly before eating. Heat and vinegar can accelerate the breakdown of solanine and make it non-toxic. However, this does not apply to potatoes that have sprouted excessively or whose flesh has mostly turned purple; even after processing, these potatoes cannot be guaranteed to be non-toxic.