Slashdot Mirror
Mmm ... Purple Disease-Resistant Potatoes
the_ph0x` writes: "An article on Reuters describes a new breed of potato as being resistant to disease, able to grow in low nutrient soil and ... purple. Not all that interesting unless you're from an area where blight is a problem. At least we'll know we can always live on potatos, which who doesn't anyway ... mmm purple tater-tots." Combine it with the hideous green ketchup Heinz is making, and eating can be like a Kadinsky ? painting!
At least we'll know we can always live on potatos, which who doesn't anyway
;-)
Diabetics have to watch their sugar/carb intake. My wife is diabetic.
Glad I could clear that up
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Them's good eatin'.
Till you grow a third nipple.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
My dad made some purple potato stuff for a church dinner. Even though they tasted identical to regular potatos, but few people tried them.
As much as the purple potato is resistant to disease, people are more resistant to change.
You could always color coordinate with purple ketchup.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
They have purple ketchup too. I saw it the other day at Meijer. I was almost disgusted that someone would actually decide that this was a viable product to sell.
;)
Green ketchup is one thing (at least there are fucking green tomatoes), but purple? No.
This is a sad sad day. Designer vegetables/fruits. Scary
Mmmmm.... purple Vodka.
Absolut Barney!
{god damn lameness filter}
Do not ingest before drinking heavily; the consequences are too terrible to think about.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
I hate to be a stick in the mud but how long till blight, or some other fungas mutates so as to effect these potatos? Once we start mass producing it something will mutate.
Still, it is good news. I support genetic engineering of crops, but if this works well then all the better.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Sounds like the perfect side dish for Green Eggs and Ham! (sorry, Ted...)
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Potato Association of America Handbook: Potato Varieties.
Off-colour vegetables.
Who says watermelon must be red?
Potatoes of note. (Potatos or potatoes, either is acceptable. Just not potatoe).
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
Purple potatoes are widely available in South America. They're also found in some fancy grocery stores in the US. Just like green and yellow and purple tomatoes, they are now regarded as "heirloom" varieties, and grown only for the novelty. Like the red carrots with more beta carotene, or the blue and purple corn sold for decorations (quite edible, although not as "saleable" to picky american eaters) it's perfectly natural.
:(
The homogenization of varieties led to blight spreading too easily, and rediscovery of "heirloom" foods (popularly tomatoes and roses-- the tomatoes are tastier and the roses better-smelling, although not as good for shipping long distances) has become something of an organic-hippie fad. That's good.
If everything becomes purple potatoes, i imagine it'll be back to homogenization again.
a.
There's nothing at all wrong with a third nipple, damn it. I'm actually eating these things by the bucketful.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"so obscure it has no name"?
I hope that's not because it just came out of the genetic engineering lab. What would one cross with to get purple? Sea Anemones perhaps?
Really, though I like potatos and GM stuff if it's useful and safe. Besides more than likely it really is nature doing freaky stuff, cause she's good at that.
You might be able to find blue potato chips at your local grocery store. Although they're called blue, the chips look more purple to me.
McDonald's isn't organic food?
These aren't new. Blue and purple potatoes are perfectly normal, and common in South America.
Here in the US, you can even get them at your local health-food store. In fact, at the very moment I am writing this I am looking at a quite delicious bag of Terra[tm] brand "Blues" (more of a cabbage-like purple) chips. They are quite good, and a little starchier than your normal chips.
Apparently, enough of them haven't made it to the UK yet to be noticed.
Probably because Pud at FC already verified it? Or did you bother to go to FC to verify it?
And why can't you respond in THAT story, rather than here?
Just a thought.
Best Slashdot Co
Soilent Purple is Barney! My God, don't eat it, it's Barney!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
puple potatoes are not at all a new thing. They have been around for a long time, though most people havent seen them. They are more common in expensive gourmet restaurants than in dennys, i frequently buy them at the local farmers market. purple doesnt meen genetically modified.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
I've heard of Big Purple People Eaters and now
we can be Big Purple Potato Eaters.
Or according to this recipe:
Purple People Eater
3/4 oz rum
1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz tequila
1/2 oz Triple Sec
1/2 oz blue curacao
1 oz sour mix
7-Up
splash grenadine
Combine all liquors and sour mix in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and shake well. Pour into a collins glass, fill with 7-Up and top with grenadine.
We can become Purple People Eater Drinkers!!!
Please don't say you can beowulf these...
They're just an odd variety - although as some other posters have mentioned, purple potatoes are not completely unknown. These purple potatoes are special because of their disease resistance, that's all.
I'm not sure if it's the skin, though, or the entire potato that's purple. The article wasn't very clear.
But in any case, the article is talking about how these will be a boon for ORGANIC farmers. I've not heard of a real organic farmer that used GM species, they tend to hate that more than pesticides!
I've been growing purple potatoes for several years now. They are actually called "All Blue". They are blue/purple inside and out. There are also red varieties which are red/pink inside and out.
Potatoes originated in Peru, where they come in a variety of colors: purple, red, white, yellow, sometimes all mixed together.
I haven't had much problem with disease, but the Colorado Potato Beetles are a real nuisance.
Check out www.irish-eyes.com and look at all of the different potato varieties they carry.
dont tell me what your feeding me today,
dont fill my head with trouble while im scarfin down a cheese soufle
i wanna be a new, original creation
a cross between a moose a monkey and a fig
i'm ready Monsanto let me be your guina pig
cuz the seed we sew aint good enough
the earth we plow it aint good enough
the food we grow well its never been up to scratch,
the geezer with the beard and all the angels
made a few mistakes I dont know why
we dont need him anymore if geneticly modify
so dont ya tell me what you're puttin in my lunch box
i got a crazy pioneering additude
dont bother me with labels gotta get a belly full of franken-food
gotta geta belly fulla franken-food
--Moxy Fruvous
Indeed. Here is a fine work of his that looks like sliced, multi-colored potatoes to me.
> Why Purple?
The pests think it's eggplant, and won't touch it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I've gotten those in CA for years! Not genetically modified, but still yummy.
sulli
RTFJ.
Even the link into everything2 is wrong. `Kadinsky' is apparently some dope smoking coffee house in Amsterdam. Maybe they paint there, maybe not. everything2 is silent on the matter.
Wassily Kandinsky was a painter. Check him out over at Thinker.org, this link ought to get you some of his works. Thinker will probably die under the load. You should also look at This guy's kandinsky page.
It is very likely that it is resistant to all potato fungal diseases. At least if it is, it won't be for very long.
-Sean
Just had a purple potato pulled out of my folk's garden. Purple all the way through, from skin to flesh, actually surprising how pigmented it was inside. Kinda cool looking, really. Good too!
HEY KIDS!
Ever wonder what tater tots used to look like when your parents ate them as kids? Look at the purple tater tots in the green Heinz ketchup. Continue staring at them without moving your eyes while you count to 30. Then look at a blank white sheet of paper and you'll see an image of the potatoes amd ketchup in their old colors like your parents used to eat!
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Personally, I'd like to cut up a cluster of these and fry them, then do a review on the Official French Fries Pages. And with neon green ketchup from Heinz, the page will certainly be memorable.
woof.
I do. I have never seen potatoes made from metals at Marsh, Kroger or Meijer.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
They are purple skinned, and they have a "purplishness" that extends slightly into the meat of the potato. The interior, the deep potato core, is normally colored.
These are actually my favorite potato chips. They are quite tasty, and people look at you strange when you eat them. They taste pretty close to regular potato chips. I suspect the main difference is the oil they are fried in.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
But can you use them to power a webserver?
:)
/*drunk.. fix later*/
This made me wonder if any serious and long term studies have been done on the concept of "cues" in the food chain. The way I understand it, evolution has decided that colour is closely tied into our abilities to determine edibility and such. That's one of the reasons why we know for example, that a ripe tomato is the red one.
Using this example of purple potatoes; I see a real problem with the colour from the health aspect. Most normal potatoes get an off-white blotch when mold sets in and this is a fairly obvious cue that it's gone bad. Other vegetables have similar behaviour signaling their end. Taking this to the logical extreme suggested by this article, what happens when designer-coloured veggies are the norm? Are we going to have to relearn, and relearn again the signs of *bad* for each new vegetable-of-the-day?
As people have pointed out, there are a zillion varieties of potato, some of which are purple. Even at the time of the Incas there were thousands of varieties, many/most of which survive to today. Here's the South America page from the World Potato Atlas. And no, until 10 minutes ago I didn't know there was such a thing as a World Potato Atlas, but it has more information than I ever imagined would be on the web about where potatoes are grown, what kind are grown, and so on.
"At least we'll know we can always live on potatos"
Just to set it straight (for the poster and for Mr. Quayle):
It's potato, not potatoe.
It's potatoes, not potatos.
It's like hero, heroes...
Kevin Fox
Red is also a common color for potatoes so I could very well see purple potatoes as well. What the article doesn't mention is whether just the skin is purple, or the whole inside is purple as well.
someone to claim hat they have a patent on blight-resistant potatoes, or colored food stuffs and sue patent infringement.
Don't laugh, as it has already happened here in the US and Mexico over yellow beans.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
This is good news considering that potatoes are a staple food supply for some countries. This could possibly help the world with food shortages.
One thing I wonder about though...did they test if the potato is insect resistant as well in their laboratories? It may be virus/bacteria resistant, but will it attract some weird worms or insects (or animals even) that will destroy the crops? Maybe there is a reason why this variety was never cultivated in some countries...because it could not survive due to some interaction with other plants or animals.
It's not genetically modified. Purple potatoes have been around for as long as, well, the potato.
The responses here show how much we've become factory farm zombies. Carrots are orange, potatoes are white, apples and tomatoes are red, etc.
In fact, what we're used to is what's convenient to ship or grow. If people were more concious of genetic diversity, we'd already have much more color on our plates. Orange carrots date from the last few hundred years, originally they were white or yellow or red. Apples came in various shades an combinations of yellow, red, and green. Corn can be blue, as well as potatoes. Tomatoes have a fantastically varied set of colors.
Some of these are now becoming known as "heirloom" varieties as people begin to understand how bland and overprocessed our diets have become.
I used to work for an organization that sponsored antropological research in S. America. I saw an interesting paper given on potatoes, which I'll try to remember here.
Potatoes are native to S. America, where there are thousands of varieties. People native to that region grow and eat a much greater variety of potatoes than we do, with different shapes (running from round to finger shaped) and colors. This is partly due to the fact that their potatoes tend to hybridize with wild "weedy" strains, and partly because they encourage hybridization. Since potatoes are a big part of their diet,different shapes, colors and tastes add variety. This strategy probably also protects them from poor harvests and pests by spreading their bets across many strains that do better in different circumstances.
There are probably a hundred or so cultivars we grow in the 1st world which tend to be large, roundish, and have white or yellow flesh. Most importantly they have been selected to have low concentrations of poisionous alkaloids in the tuber. Potatoes are closely related to jimson weed and deadly nightshade and are normally poisonous. Where they eat many more primitive and diverse varieties of pototatoes, the potatoes must be treated specially to remove the alkaloids. They are spread on a blanket or a tarp, trod upon to break their skins and left outside several days to freeze and thaw. Apparently this reduces the concentrations of alkaloids to where they can be consumed safely, although you might still get sick if you aren't used to eating native potatoes.
I don't know if the flesh or the skin of this particular potato is purple -- probably just the skin, although I suppose it is possible that the flesh might be colored. Yellow flesh is not uncommon; green is a sign that a potato wasn't properly handled and may be poisonous. The interesting thing is that it apprently this strain came from European gardens. They could probably develop a number of useful new strains by hybridizing with wild potatoes.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I think that everyone here is missing is the obvious application of this on extra-planetary colonies. Yes, I know that we don't have any now and that we aren't likely to have any in the next hundred years. There are two reasons that this is very exciting: there aren't likely to be very many nutrients in the soil of, say, mars and diseases will mutate faster because of the increased radiation on other planets without an atmosphere. Also, as was recently hypothesized, there may be microbes in places other than earth and they are likely to not be very healthy for the plants and vegetables that we are going to eat..
rJames.org - illustration
McDonald's isn't organic food?
McDonald's isn't food, period.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
You can also cut them in big chunks and make "steak fries". They look normal on the outside (i.e., brown), but they're purple on the inside.
I've never had a guest flip out over the color, other than to remark on how nice they look.
can be found here.
Potatoes as with other agricultural crops have several varieties which thrive depending on the climate and soil quality. Many have mutated over the years to combat pests in their environments and these are the ones being rediscovered. Usually these varieties do not have the productivity qualities desired by the farmer who wants to produce the most out of his land.
Return the bells of Balangiga.
So there is a link to Everything2.com for an explanation of who Kandinsky is, pretty good, since everyone might not know what a Kadinsky painting looks like, right? The only thing strange here, is the page on Everything2 only talks about a coffe house in Amsterdam. You have to go to the bottom and click on "Wassily Kandinsky" to see anything about the painter.
Seems like the editor should check those links before putting them up!
Good thing I already know what a Kadinsky painting looks like.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
I've actually eaten purple potatoes...the wife brought them back for me from a farmer's market in Philly. These were regular potatoes grown in coloured water (coloured by the organic agent that prevented beetles i'm told) and they were very very cool to slice up, as you could see the packets of starch that would build up inside (and, I'm told again, cut them out if you're on a low starch diet).
They tasted just like regular red potatoes, and when I fried them up Saratoga style they made a very pleasant addition to a banquet-style spread we had for our halloween party.
I might add that they cost a bit less than the russets they had at the same market, and didn't taste anywhere near as the six dollar per pound organic russets I buy at the organic market when I make a batch of my super spicy Megabyte fries. Want the recipe? I'm afraid it's carefully guarded and heavily encrypted, but one of the secret ingredients is "sweetened cornmeal".
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"Purple shit--it's not just for Cookie Monster any more."
That's nothing. They're going to be introducing purple ketchup next. I figger for my Mardi Gras party I can serve hot dogs garnished with green and purple ketchup and yellow mustard. Lots of fun until the kids get hyperactive and you come down with cancer.
Seriously though, there are "natural" strains of potato that are purple, so it's not like it's some kind of freak.
Now, I'll get me a blue Nehi and settle back and enjoy the FD&C rainbow.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
How about "That Silly Person With Funky Hair, the Wild Guitar and the High Voice", since he can't seem to figure out what his own name is?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
An Heirloom fruit or vegetable is one that breeds true from seed and self-pollinates, as opposed to a hybrid.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Combine it with the hideous green ketchup Heinz is making
Heinz also makes purple ketchup. I saw it in my local supermarket.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Thanks. That's interesting.
Anyone wondering about who kadinsky was... you'll likely become rather frustrated looking it up. Wassily Kandinsky is the artist's name. Very nifty stuff, his.
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the at least the potato-brand Blue Congo (quite usual here in Sweden) is blue on the inside too. And they taste really nice. And make mashed potatoes look soooo much nicer. Those aren't GMO either.
My wife and I "subscribe" to a Community Supported Farm which, for about $25 or $50 per month spread throughout the year, you receive a box of organic produce biweekly or weekly, respectively. Said box contains whatever they plant and whatever's in season at the moment.
Having been a normal supermarket shopper until a few years ago, these boxes contain spectacular produce. Nobody usually remembers that tomatoes aren't supposed to be hard, bright red and crunchy (or pasty).
Anyway the point is, they've had blue/purple potatoes in that box for years -- probably not the resistant kind. They're good and kind of fun to eat.
Beyond that, there are all kinds of funky tomatoes you've never seen. Last week we got these green tomatoes that were striped kind of like a watermelon. They were tart yet ripe -- really neat. There's yellow ones all gnarled up that are really good, orange, red, of all shapes and sizes.
All kinds of other funky foods come. Did you know there are many types of garlic some of which really are better than the standard grocery store Italian? Ever had a ground cherry (a bit like a tomatillo but sweet)?
The point is, there's a lot of "odd" foods out there that really aren't odd at all. We've just never seen them because it's so much easier to grow a field of identical, drought-resistant, disease-resistant, shipping-friendly idaho spuds than anything else. I encourage people to support their local farmer's markets and try Community Supported Agriculture -- not only is it earth-friendly but you get cool vegetables as well!
Yams are also a variety of potato. We North Americans tend to get confused by the color. If you want to try the various styles and colors of potatoes available, skip the Safeway next time you go out to shop, and try some of the (South American) ethnic stores.
In fact, I'd say just try ethnic stores in general! There is a small Vietnamese grocery near my place. They have all sorts of interesting things that I have yet to try. I've been experimenting, lately with different varieties of rice. I've come to texture the texture of brown rice over plain white, and have started experimenting with sticky rice (wow, incredible!). Never would have tried it if I hadn't gotten curious walking through the store, and asked how to cook these things.
People are so willing to share their culture and food with us if we only ask. It's incredible what you can learn by asking someone in a store what to do with a 'strange' plant that they seem to know about.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Where did you get the purple varieties?
Growing potatoes is fun and easy; I've done it with some rotting store potatoes. The foliage of the plant is beautiful. I'd be interested in growing some unusual kinds.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For a far better take on the William Wallace story, try reading "The Scottish Chiefs" by Jane Porter. Although it is a work of fiction, it is reasonably in accord with history in most regards, and a far better story than Braveheart. It explores Wallace's motivations and strength much better as well, and paints him as the complex character that he really was, insisting on servanthood all the while he was the strongest leader in Scotland.
/. readers won't have the guts required to read this, since it will grate with their self-centered worldview (much like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which I expect many slashdotters can't handle for similar reasons.)
Warning: The themes of this work are honor, humility, and the importance of always honoring God by one's actions, so many
BTW: If you do read it, get the version illustrated with the beautiful N.C. Wyeth paintings - They're a 20th century addition, of course, but so perfect a fit that it's hard to imagine the book without them.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
The peruvian purple potato you had is a common enough variety. You can obtain it in any specialty supermarket or produce market, or from a restaurant wholesaler. I moonlight as a chef - just designing the recipies, locating suppliers, training cooks and procurers, that sort of thing - so I spend a lot of time studying these things. The purple potatoes you refer to have been around for a lot longer than GM foods. So have gold, black, and pale blue/periwinkle toned potatoes. I know of one with a pinkish flesh tone and a slightly creamy-sweet flavor. There are also purple sweet potatoes (Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, with a slightly different culture and cousine) that have a wonderfully rich flavor, and purple yams (the real thing, not the sweet potato that gets sold as a yam in american supermarkets) in Thailand, which are grated and used for deserts. Some of these foods have a bright enough purple to look purely synthetic, and some have a beautiful lavender hue. Just because the color is odd is no reason to dismiss the food.
The thing to remember about GM foods is, many of them are really no more extreme in result than a few decades of cross breeding. Traits from on subspecies are imported into another - disease resistance, productivity, flavor, sweetness - without the intermediate stage of weeding out failures. Others are the result of importing animal genes, and these might have unexpected consequences, and should be more rigorously tested. I'd worry most about the ones with chemical pesticide production engineered in, not the disease resistant ones.
Of course, plants engineered to sterilize their non-GM competitors (Hey, Joe-Bob, what happened to your farm? - Oh, hi Bob-Joe, that GM wheat wiped my seed out for this year and I went under...) are a real worry... reducing the number of food crops to a few genomes is really hazardous to our viability.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement