VeggieSensations.com

Potatoes are a great source of energy weather it be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. With 19grams of carbohydrates and .1 gram of fat they are a healthy base for any meal. But surprisingly the United States are not the leading producers of potatoes. That honor goes to China. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2005, potatoes were the fifth highest production crop in the world at 710 billion pounds a year.

Most people know potato plants can be grown by cutting off a small portion of a potato that has a sprout developing, burry it in the ground, add water and watch it grow. Well potato plants actually grow seeds from a small green fruit that look similar to green cherry-tomatoes. These produce seeds like other fruits. Each of the fruits can contain up to 300 true seeds. One can separate the seeds from the fruits by putting them in a blender on a slow speed with some water, then leaving them in water for a day so that the seeds will sink and the rest of the fruit will float. Potato fruit contains poisonous substances and one should not eat them. But the seeds will grow productive potato plants.

Potatoes have a high carbohydrate content and include protein, minerals (particularly potassium), and vitamins, including vitamin C. Freshly harvested potatoes retain more vitamin C than stored potatoes. Potatoes also provide starch, flour, alcohol and dextrin.

Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids, which are toxic compounds, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Cooking at high temperatures (over 170 �C or 340 �F) partly destroys these. The concentration of glycoalkaloid in wild potatoes produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloids occur in the greatest concentrations just underneath the skin of the tuber, and they increase with age and exposure to light. Glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps and in severe cases coma and death; however, poisoning from potatoes occurs very rarely. Light exposure also causes greening, thus giving a visual clue as to areas of the tuber that may have become more toxic; however, this does not provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other. Some varieties of potato contain greater glycoalkaloid concentrations than others; breeders developing new varieties test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar. Breeders try to keep solanine levels below 0.2 mg/g. Dr. Douglas L. Holt, the State Extension Specialist for Food Safety at the University of Missouri - Columbia, notes that no reported cases of potato-source solanine poisoning have occurred in the U.S. in the last 50 years and most cases involved eating green potatoes or drinking potato-leaf tea.

Refrence: Wikipedia