In message , Gary Woods
writes
"keith" wrote:

The green appears to be only on the
peel but I have read somewhere that green potatoes can be poisonous.

It's caused by exposure to light, before or after harvest. I forget the
chemical name; the green pigment is toxic, but is destroyed by heat. So
unless you eat your spuds raw (I went to a talk by a potato and tomato
breeder, and he does just that to test), I wouldn't worry.


My understanding was that it wasn't the green pigment (which I assumed
was chlorophyll) but an alkaloid (solanine) which is coproduced. (All
parts of potatoes, other than the tubers, are poisonous.)

http://www.actahort.org/books/38/38_20.htm

I also doubt that cooking is sufficient to destroy solanine; one
anecdote that I've heard is of a variety which didn't make it to market
because a chap at the research station fried up a batch of tubers, and
consequently went down with solanine poisoning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley