Today’s interesting fact has to do with green potatoes.

This past weekend, I was asked if it was safe to eat green potatoes.

The simple answer is that it isn’t.

I was then asked why… no one should ever ask me why if they don’t want the answer.

When potatoes are exposed to light, they turn green.

This is caused by chlorophyll becoming active in the tuber under the skin.

But it is not the chlorophyll that causes the problem, but the glycoalkaloids that are produced along with the chlorophyll.

These are mostly the chemicals solanine and chaconine, but there are others.

High concentrations of these compounds can cause headaches, diarrhoea, cramps, coma and death.

So don’t eat green potatoes.

Today's interesting fact has to do with the islandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull.

Recently this volcano has been delcared to be a green eruption.

The reason for this, is that the amount of greenhouse gasses it produced are less than the amount of greenhouse glasses that would have been produced by the planes that the eruption grounded.

It says something that the planes flying to, from and within Europe, produce more CO2, that a series of volcanic eruptions.