Bad tasting potato!!!!

[Worth1]

My wife purchased some potatoes from the store.
They were white thin skinned potatoes and they tasted like a chemical of some sort.
They were washed and all of that sort of thing but they had an off taste to them.

I’m getting over a head cold so maybe that is it.
Has anyone else had a nice hard fresh potato that tasted like a chemical?

Worth

[landarc]

Yes, a perfectly good looking potato, yet, bad taste. I have no idea why, I wonder if there isn't some chemical they spray on them to make them last longer before going soft and yucky.

[feraltomatoes]

As far as I know all commercial non-organic potatoes are gassed with growth retardant and probably more.
Wonder if any of those high payed workers at the potato plant gas em a little too much.
Not to mention some of the other games that are played with food. Um sir that shipment of potatoes that just traveled 2000 miles might not make it till month after next, what should we do?

I had a hashbrown at a fastfood place a couple weeks ago and it had a horrible chemical taste. I ate most of it before I noticed. Two cups of coffee and I could still taste it.

[cdntomato]

Non-organic potato fields are also doused with liquid chemicals to kill the plant's leafy growth before mechanical harvest of tubers. How much is absorbed by the taters???

Jennifer, committed organic (or commitable)

[MawkHawk]

Yuck.

[Althea]

I first became aware of the amount of pesticides used on potato crops when I read Michael Pollan's book, "The Botany of Desire.

Here's a link to an interview where he says he learned that potatoes get 14 douses of pesticides a year.

http://www.planetaorganico.com.br/pollaneng1.htm

I don't know if that's standard for all growers.

I'm another committable organic gardener & consumer.

[bizzarbazzar]

Yuck, I haven't had one that tasted like chemicals to me but it looks like I'm fortunate.

[landarc]

I first learned about the chemicals put on a field of potatoes from my Uncle in Idaho who refused to eat any potato where the skin was still attached. He said you just don't know what is in the skin.

[bizzarbazzar]

Yuck

[shelleybean]

Wow, that stinks. People are eating their potatoes with skin thinking they're getting a little extra fiber and they're really getting chemicals??? Nasty.

[Fusion_power]

Potatoes produce a chemical called solanin when the tubers are exposed to light. It is very likely that the chemical taste being discussed here is just a potato doing what it does naturally.

If you are curious, next time you see a potato that has turned green under the skin, cut off a piece of the peel and taste it. Solanin is nasty stuff. It is also poisonous.

Fusion

[feldon30]

I discard any potatoes that have greenish skin.

[Worth1]

I never said they had green skins or anything close to it.
They were perfectly nice white potatoes with a strange taste.

Worth