Potato

POTATOES GMO

I never knew about Bud-Nip or Chlorpropham. It takes a child’s experiment with an inquisitive mind to make buying organic understandable. CHLORPROPHAM AVOID Is plant growth regulator and herbicide used as a sprout suppressant, called Beet-Kleen, Bud Nip, Chloro IPC, CIPC, Furloe, Sprout Nip, Spud-Nic, Taterpex, Triherbide-CIPC, and Unicrop CIPC. Approved for use on potatoes in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It has caused death in laboratory animals. Toxicity to humans, includes carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity. Uses: Brown rice, apple, mandarin, Kimchi cabbage, green pepper, potato, soybean, sweet potato, beets, onions, shallots. This is approved in Germany where the love eating potatoes.

Potatoes are best avoided with cystic organs. All nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, tobacco, belladonna) are best avoided. The potato, in addition to being high in solanine has also been genetically engineered. Its genes have been crossed with that of another species:

a bacteria's genes have been crossed with a plant's genes. This has led to some forms of the potato re- classified as pesticides.

According to the potato study:

"A secret feeding study of Monsanto GM potatoes, conducted in 1998 by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and suppressed for 8 years, showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the organs of the rats in the study Ironically, the NewLeaf GM potato was a failure, and it proved to give poor yields and to be susceptible to disease in European environments. While Monsanto was enthusiastically promoting its GM potatoes in Eastern Europe, it was having second thoughts in the United States and Western Europe, and pulled out of GM potato development in 2002. The results of the 1998 GM potato rat feeding study may well have had a bearing on that decision.".

HOW POTATOES RECEIVED ELEVATED STATUS

Potatoes were elevated in status when the celebrated Parmentier produced a galaxy of delicious potato recipes in 1785 to help relieve famine in Paris. Potatoes were inexpensive food for the masses - a peasant or worker could be fed from a quarter as much land if they ate potatoes instead of grain. Nonetheless, the French Revolution took place 4 years later. The Paris Commune declared potatoes 'Revolutionary food' while English landlords made them compulsory on their Irish estates. Asians eat the leaves of the murungai tree to feed their masses, often touted as a possible food answer to world hunger, murungai, malungai too can feed the masses.

Traditionally potatoes were kept in paper sacks and sold unwashed. This practice protects them from direct sunlight. The modern practice of washing potatoes and packing them in plastic bags allows light to affect the potato and stimulate its production of solanine, the nightshade alkaloid that, in nature, sickens animals that might dig up potatoes as food. In 1976 the Department of Health, concerned about high levels of anencephaly and spina bifida, urged pregnant mothers to wear rubber gloves when preparing potatoes and to discard in their entirety any potatoes that showed signs of greening or of blight (black streaks in the potato). It is not enough to simply remove the discolored part - the entire potato should not be eaten. The solanine in potatoes is 4 times greater in the skin than in the rest of the potato. The fatal dose of solanine for an adult is 200-250 mg depending on body weight. Potatoes should not contain more than 20 mg of solanine per 100g, so it would take at least 1 Kg of potatoes (2.2 lb.) to be fatal. Potato peels have been found to contain up to 180 mg of solanine per 100g, so a person consuming 150-200g of deep fried potato peels with a high solanine content could be at considerable risk. Potatoes that have been properly stored and are from low solanine varieties will only contain 7 mg/100g. In 1996 the Committee on Toxicity stated that potatoes should not be eaten if they still taste bitter after the green parts and sprouts have been removed. However, few people taste-test a raw potato once it is peeled to assess its bitterness. Although spina bifida prevention now focuses on preconceptual consumption of folic acid, the world's highest incidence of spina bifida is in Ireland, where the wet climate encourages late potato blight. A study in Belfast showed that mothers who had given birth to a child with spina bifida or anencephaly could reduce the risk of a similar defect in the second child by 50% if they maintained a potato-free diet.

Solanine is harmful even in small quantities and present in the green markings on potatoes. These are to be avoided. Potatoes are very high in potassium and as such are to be avoided as kidney functioning declines.

More on potatoes: Potato chips and French Fries: with an Omega ratio of 63, America's favorite snack foods pack a huge dose of Omega-6 fats, enough to seriously imbalance the body's essential fatty acid ratio, even when consumed in small amounts. (Does anyone really eat "small amounts" of potato chips?). But that's not the worst of it.
Heating starches produces acrylamides - known neurotoxins and carcinogens capable of damaging DNA. The more you heat starches, the more acrylamides you end up with. Products like normal potato chips contain so much acrylamides that they exceed the World Health Organization's daily allowances 2000-3000 thousand fold.

This news was downplayed in the USA. On CNN they said "It's just one study," "More research is needed," (After all, let's not go to extremes and start thinking we really need to tell people about dangerous chemicals in their food supply---- especially when these foods are Big Business). Potato chips and French fries are the worst foods when it comes to acrylamides, with "foods" like cookies, bread and other starchy foods containing lesser, though still problematic amounts, of this carcinogenic, nervous-system toxic substance. "

AVOID Acrylamide is very high in potatoes that are heated to a very high temperature as in a deep fry. This is a known carcinogen in laboratory animals. It impairs fertility in male animals, and causes nerve damage to humans exposed in the workplace (FSA, 2002). It is best to be avoided with PKD and PLD. Acrylamide is an organic chemical recently found to occur naturally in certain food products. It has long been used for industrial purposes, in producing polyacrylamide gels, and as a grouting agent in construction. Polyacrylamide is used as a papermaking aid, as a soil-conditioning agent, in ore processing, in sewage treatment, and occasionally as an additive for water treatment (FSA, 2002). Acrylamide is also a known component of cigarette smoke.

On the other hand, a few have reported some beneficial results by eating baked potato skins (the non- green kind). Potato skins are reported by some to return gray hair to its natural color. Potato skin has: .325 mg manganese 262 mg potassium 42 mg phosphorus 1.86 zinc .572 iron 16 magnesium.

6 cups cauliflower (1 medium head)
4 ounces cream cheese
1 teaspoon garlic
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Preparation

Cut cauliflower into pieces and rinse with water.
Place cauliflower pieces in a microwave safe dish, cover and cook on high for 8 to 10 minutes or until soft.
Drain off moisture from cooked cauliflower.
Carefully place hot cauliflower in a blender and blend until smooth.
Add cream cheese, garlic, and pepper. Blend to combine ingredients.
Remove from blender and serve hot.
Nutrients per serving

Calories: 94
Protein: 3 g
Carbohydrate: 6 g
Fat: 7 g
Cholesterol: 19 mg
Sodium: 76 mg
Potassium: 198 mg
Phosphorus: 54 mg
Calcium: 22 mg
Fiber: 3.4 g
Renal and Renal Diabetic Food Choices

Garlic powder may be substituted for the minced garlic.
Since cauliflower is bland like potatoes, this recipe tastes similar to mashed potatoes. The potassium content is 100 mg lower per serving.
To reduce fat content, use light cream cheese. Protein, sodium, potassium and phosphorus content will be slightly higher.

I have researched this a lot because I read an article stating that eating potatoes that are green (not green as in unripe, but colored green right beneath the skin. After I learned of this danger, I asked the produce manager of the supermarket where I shop about this. He told me it is caused from them being exposed to fluorescent lights. So I started going to the farmers market to buy potatoes, where I thought they'd be fresh and hadn't lain around under a light in Kroger's warehouse. I've looked in a lot of different grocery stores and this seems to be a common problem. Another problem, incidentally, that no one cares enough about to solve.

We have yet to call the poison control center but I know my family and almost every family in this country is eating these potatoes. But then aren't we consuming aspartame in great quantities too? And aren't we eating margarine and many other foods that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils? I do believe the only way to eat safe food is to grow it yourself! And I do a little of that too.
---Colleen

Here's the challenge: to taste--really, fully, mindfully taste--what you're eating.

By Edward Espe Brown
Reprinted with permission from "Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings: Recipes & Reflections" by Edward Espe Brown (Riverhead Books).

Years ago at a meditation retreat, we had an eating meditation. Raisins were passed out. We were encouraged to help ourselves to a small handful, "But don't eat them yet!" I sighed. I am not thrilled with this kind of exercise. I prefer to have these experiences on my own, instead of having them spoon-fed to me.
We were instructed to look at the raisins, to observe their appearance, to note their color and texture--"But don't eat them yet!" I supposed it could be worse, like "Ready now, one, two, three, open your heart to the raisins." Next we were invited to smell the raisins, and finally, after a suitable interval allowing for the aromas to register, we were permitted to put the raisins in our mouths, "But don't chew them yet!"

In cultures where eating rituals were widespread, people experienced few eating disorders.

By now I was feeling annoyed and increasingly aware of an urge to smash something. "Leave me alone," I complained (loudly to myself.). "Let me eat, for goodness' sake." To have your act of eating abruptly arrested is upsetting and disturbing. Get something tasty in your mouth, and your teeth want to close on it. But WAIT! We were then instructed to simply feel the raisins in our mouth, their texture, their presence. We were obliged to restrain saliva flow and the impulse to chew.

At last, we were permitted to complete the act of eating. The raisins could be chewed. More juices flowed. The sweet and the sticky were liberated from their packets--"But don't swallow yet!"

"Be aware of your swallowing. See if you can make your swallowing conscious." Some people, I guess, just have a knack for knowing how to take all the fun out of things. This noting and observing, attending and awakening, certainly doesn't leave much opportunity for joyful abandon, but I'll always remember those raisins.

Indeed, I thought of them when I taught a workshop on Zen and psychoanalysis with Andre Patsalides, a Lacanian psychoanalyst. We called the event "Eating Orders and Disorders." Andre explained that in cultures where eating rituals were widespread, people experienced few eating disorders. Conversely, we see that ours is a culture with few eating rituals and numerous disorders. Many families, perhaps 25% to 30%, almost never eat together, according to many reports. The refrigerator, freezer, and cupboard are full of each family member's favorites, which can be microwaved when each one wishes, maybe between TV shows.

It's the American dream, the American way: freedom, disconnection, food as product, food as fuel, never having to interact. The basic rule, of course, is to pay very little attention to the stuff--food, sitcom, people, or game show--coming in and then to be just a bit baffled as to why you feel so undernourished in the midst of all this plenitude.

I wanted to lead our workshop in an eating meditation, but hey, I thought, let's get real. Let's skip the raisins and meditate on eating just one potato chip. Then I thought we could go to oranges, my concession to wholesome, and conclude with Hydrox cookies. I picked Hydrox because I had heard they were the "kosher Oreos" (no pig fat, I guess).

Since I didn't want to parcel out the instructions as they had been given to me, I laid out the whole deal to start: Pay attention. Allow your attention to come to the potato chip and be as fully conscious as you can of the whole process of eating just one potato chip. Just one! So you had better pay attention.

"Instead of words," Rilke says in one of his sonnets, "discoveries flow out astonished to be free."

When I announced our potato-chip-eating meditation, I was greeted with various gripes, taunts, and complaints: "I can't eat just one." "That's ridiculous." "You're going to leave us hanging with unsatisfied desire. How could you?" Nonetheless, I remained steadfast in my instructions and passed around a bowl of potato chips, urging each participant to take just one. When everyone was ready, we commenced. "Instead of words," Rilke says in one of his sonnets, "discoveries flow out astonished to be free." And so it was.

First the room was loud with crunching, then quiet with savoring and swallowing. When all was fed and done, I invited comments. Many people had been startled by their experience: "I thought I would have trouble eating just one, but it really wasn't very tasty." "There's nothing to it." "There's an instant of salt and grease, and then some tasteless pulpy stuff in your mouth." "I can see why you might have trouble eating just one, because you take another and another to try to find some satisfaction where there is no real satisfaction to be found." "If I was busy watching TV, I would probably think they were great, but when I actually experience what's in my mouth, it's kind of distasteful."

That one potato chip even surprised me, the experienced meditator, with its tastelessness. Now I walk past the walls of chips in the supermarket rather easily without awakening insidious longings and the resultant thought that I really ought to "deny" myself. I don't feel deprived. There's nothing there worth having. And this is not just book knowledge. I know it.

The oranges were fabulous, exquisite, satisfying. The reports were: "Juicy ... refreshing ... sweet ... succulent ... rapturous." About half the participants refused to finish the Hydrox cookie. One bite and newly awakened mouths simply bid the hands to set aside what remained: "This we know to be something we do not need, desire, want, wish for. Thanks anyway."

Bets have been made. Challenges have been laid. You've been told you can't do it. You've never dared to try, but here's the secret. Taste. Taste what you put in your mouth. Experience it!

The potato chip is already manufactured and is always "ready for you" (waiting perhaps innumerable eons for this opportunity), so concentrate on preparing the other ingredients. To strengthen and focus the concentration, eliminate all the most obvious distractions: TV, radio, stereo, reading material (especially People magazine and the daily newspaper), talking, shopping, driving. Concentration is to be applied to the potato chip and only to the potato chip. No dip allowed. You are encouraged to be seated and not to have a drink in the other hand.

Attention is to be attuned to what is actually present moment after moment. "Attuned" because attention is often turned toward what is wished for or feared, and frequently glosses over the actual experience. Refine or focus the attention by pointing out what is to be attended to: how the chip feels in the hand, how the chip looks in the hand, the smell of the chip, the intention to place said object in the mouth, how the chip feels in the mouth, how the chip tastes (moment after moment!), how the chewing sounds, and, carefully now, the sensation of swallowing.

Mindfulness is to be "whipped up" or aroused, as it tends to save itself for things more important than chips. Remind yourself that eating a potato chip with mindfulness is vitally important. To be mindful means that the experiences attended to actually make an impression.

One way to arouse mindfulness is to practice making notes about what you are going to tell your grandchildren about this particular potato chip: "beige ... greasy between the fingers ... exquisite curve ... cute ruffles ... urge (like a fire flaming to life) to place in mouth ... feel with tongue ... powerful crunch..." and so forth. But please, don't take my word for it. Find your own words.

Got your ingredients together? Seated? Undistracted? Focused? When you are ready, you may pick up and eat (better yet, savor) that one potato chip. Get everything you can out of that chip, because it's the only chip in the entire universe.

Edward Espe Brown is the author of the best-seller 'Tassajara Bread Book' and past president of the San Francisco ZenCenter. He helped found the acclaimed Greens restaurant in San Francisco, with chef Deborah Madison.

In general, I try to avoid all nightshade plants: potatoes, tomatoes, chilies, peppers, eggplant. These all contain solanine. Sometimes I eat the baked skin of the potato. The baked skin is high in magnesium and manganese, two minerals that help prevent baldness or thinning hair. Another food that is high in these minerals is chocolate, but alas chocolate is my downfall. . . .

Potatoes are high in potassium. Careful if you need to restrict. Potato skins and cabbage juice aide in keeping hair its natural color and diminishing grays. . .

The toxin is found throughout the plant but especially in green potatoes and in the new sprouts. Never eat potatoes that are spoiled or green below the skin. Always throw away the sprouts.

Potatoes that are not green and have had any sprouts removed are safe to eat, provided that have not been heated to a very high heat. This activates acrylamide, a toxin.

The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, grown for its starchy tuber.

Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids, 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 suffices to 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 (200 ppmw). However, when even these commercial varieties turn green, they can approach concentrations of solanine of 1 mg/g (1000 ppmw). Some studies suggest that 200 mg of solanine can constitute a dangerous dose. This dose would require eating 1 average-sized spoiled potato or 4 to 9 good potatoes (over 3 pounds or 1.4 kg) at one time. The National Toxicology Program suggests that the average American consumes 12.5 mg/person/day of solanine from potatoes. 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.

Solanine is also found in other plants, in particular the deadly nightshade. This poison affects the nervous system causing weakness and confusion. See Solanine for more information.

Slice it so the skin remains with a small portion of the white potato meat. Slice into cubes about 1 inch. Throw away the interior meat. As you are slicing check that the potato has no eyes and has not turned green. This contains higher concentrations of solanine and can be toxic.

Rub olive oil on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle the potatoes with rosemary and thyme. Bake at 375 for about an hour. These are crunchy and taste a bit like croutons on a salad.

In my experience within my own body, I avoid the nightshade family of vegetables: tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, belladonna (deadly nightshade) and tobacco (thought of by a few as deadly).

I avoid these, even though I have excellent kidney functioning because after eating them my kidneys ache. I will have one tomato in season freshly picked and organic from time to time on a homemade pizza. Even with taking these extra precautions, I still experience an ache in my kidneys.

At a PKD conference Dr. Bennett said nightshade plants are to be avoided with kidney cysts. The small seeds are especially harmful if one has diverticuli disease of the colon. This can be part of PKD. The small seeds can get into the intestinal pouches and cause inflammation, infection and pain. He went on to say that anyone with PKD should avoid the nightshade family of vegetables.

Potatoes contain high amounts of aflatoxin and are to be avoided. Peppers and eggplant I avoid due to kidney pain.

This family of vegetables is high is estrogen like substances. This is another reason I avoid them with liver cysts. It could make liver cysts grow.