Green Shoulders

[Black Krim]

Being the product of the modern grocery, green shoulders have a stigma that I want to erase.....that is if warrented.

To me the green is un sightly and being a relative to the potato, is it ok to eat? Small amounts of green potato peels cause GI upset. But also tomatos??

Reading the varieties at Tatiana's site gives me hope that the green is fine to eat.

Why do some varieties have the green and others dont.... beyond selection.

Thank you in advance.

[NarnianGarden]

Different genes cause different colors.
Yes, green shoulders are safe to eat - and often even delicious. Your namesake Black Krim often has green shoulders at its mature stage.

[Cole_Robbie]

Uniform ripening was bred into commercial varieties for the sake of making them easy to pick for field workers. I believe later research also tied that breeding to a lower sugar content, and may very well have been where it all went wrong in regard to the flavor of grocery store tomatoes.

[KarenO]

Yes, green shoulders are common in some OP tomatoes, especially the blacks. Edible of course. Some tomatoes, the green when ripe varieties, are entirely green and delicious fully ripe.
These tomatoes retain chlorophyl when ripe, it is genetic and normal for those varieties.
KarenO

[brownrexx]

Green tomatoes contain tomatine which is not toxic. Potato parts that are green contain solanine which can make you sick or even be toxic in large quantities.

We eat fried green tomatoes all summer with no problems.

[Black Krim]

Originally Posted by NarnianGarden

Different genes cause different colors.
Yes, green shoulders are safe to eat - and often even delicious. Your namesake Black Krim often has green shoulders at its mature stage.

Yes, the BK has big green shoulders. I hated cutting off the green shoulders, better safe than sorry, and left me about two bites of very tastey tomato. So.. BK green shoulders are tastey you say, how will I know about others?? Or is the "tastey" limited to the black varieties?

[Black Krim]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Uniform ripening was bred into commercial varieties for the sake of making them easy to pick for field workers. I believe later research also tied that breeding to a lower sugar content, and may very well have been where it all went wrong in regard to the flavor of grocery store tomatoes.

THanks for your comments. You keep me thinking outside the box!

[Black Krim]

Originally Posted by KarenO

Yes, green shoulders are common in some OP tomatoes, especially the blacks. Edible of course. Some tomatoes, the green when ripe varieties, are entirely green and delicious fully ripe.
These tomatoes retain chlorophyl when ripe, it is genetic and normal for those varieties.
KarenO

THanks Karen.

I did try a couple green tomatos last summer. Kept waiting for one plant to ripen!!! Never ripened. Well I suddenly, eureka!, bet this one is a green cherry. It was good!!! Not like a red tomato --very different. Funny how I never did think of a "green" tomato as poisonous!! Just if the shoulders were green!!

[Black Krim]

Originally Posted by brownrexx

Green tomatoes contain tomatine which is not toxic. Potato parts that are green contain solanine which can make you sick or even be toxic in large quantities.

We eat fried green tomatoes all summer with no problems.

THAT explains it.. a different chemical!!!

(two university teachers ate green potato peels to have a better understanding of just how poisonous ....hence the GI upset.) Adventurous !

[gorbelly]

In many European countries, people see green-shouldered tomatoes as especially desirable and think they are more delicious than even ripening kinds. This belief has a basis in reality:

Those green shoulders turn out to be more significant than you might think. In this week's issue of the journal Science, scientists report that when they disappeared from modern tomatoes, some of the tomato's taste went with them.

Here's how. Sometime before 1930, somewhere in America, a tomato grower noticed a plant that was producing distinctive fruit. These fruit turned red from stem to tip in a uniform way. They didn't have any of those bothersome green shoulders.

It was a new mutation, and plant breeders saw it as the next big thing.
[...]

The researchers discovered that this natural tomato gene, when it works properly, produces those green shoulders on tomatoes. The darker green color comes from the chlorophyll in plant structures called chloroplasts, which is what converts sunlight into sugars for the plant. In fact, those dark green shoulders were making those old tomatoes sweeter and creating more flavor.

The uniform-ripening mutation disabled this gene.

"We find out that, oh my goodness, this is one of the factors that led to the deterioration of flavor in the commercial tomato," says Harry Klee, a professor of horticulture at the University of Florida.

From: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...-kept-on-going

[Fred Hempel]

Actually, green shoulders are correlated with flavor, and removing them (according to recent academic work) seems to be correlated with flavor degradation.

I see Gorbelly's post of 1 hour ago makes mine redundant.

[Black Krim]

Fred, your opinion is welcome too.

Gorbelly, thanks for the details.

Need to revamp my seed wish list.

[FigPig]

Originally Posted by brownrexx

Green tomatoes contain tomatine which is not toxic. Potato parts that are green contain solanine which can make you sick or even be toxic in large quantities.

We eat fried green tomatoes all summer with no problems.

If I remember correctly, the green on potatoes is actually caused by exposure to sun, so it has more to do with conditions creating the toxicity. Interesting discussion, though- I never thought about why some tomatoes have green and others don't. Just seemed more "natural" than potatoes, I guess.

[brownrexx]

When potatoes are exposed to sunlight they produce chlorophyll in that area but they also produce more solanine in that area as a natural defense against being eaten.

The chlorophyll itself is not toxic but it indicates the presence of increased concentrations of solanine in that area of the tuber.

[gorbelly]

The green on both tomatoes and green potatoes is from chlorophyll. It's just that, in the potato, it indicates that there are likely high amounts of solanine. A potato plant has the highest concentration of solanine in new shoots. A green potato is one that is exposed to sun and is therefore in conditions conducive to sprouting, i.e., forming new shoots. A potato that isn't green but is starting to sprout should also be discarded, as it's also going to have high concentrations of solanine. In tomatoes, on the other hand, the chlorophyll doesn't indicate the presence of anything toxic.

Tomatine in tomatoes may or may not have a point at which it becomes toxic, but there's only one recorded case of poisoning blamed on tomatine (supposedly from a tea made from the leaves), and it's not a very well documented one.

By contrast, although most of us wouldn't eat enough green potatoes in one sitting to cause problems, there are actually documented cases of solanine poisoning in the medical literature.

Tomatine may actually have significant health benefits:

In 2000, Dr. Friedman and colleagues reported that when lab animals ingest tomatine, essentially all of it passes through the animal unabsorbed. The alkaloid apparently binds to cholesterol in the digestive system, and the combination is excreted — ridding the body of both alkaloid and cholesterol. The researchers found that both tomatine-rich green tomatoes and purified tomatine lowered the levels of undesirable LDL cholesterol in animals.

Dr. Friedman has also found that an extract of green tomato lowers the incidence of cancer in animals, and last month he reported that both this extract and purified tomatine inhibit the growth of various human cancer cells. Other studies have found that purified tomatine seems to stimulate the immune system in desirable ways.

From NY Times: Accused, Yes, but Probably not a Killer