When you go to the pantry for vegetables to make a great recipe, there are times when you see onions and potatoes sprouting very characteristic green shoots, especially when we forget them at the end of the drawer. In this case, instinct usually tells us that we should throw those vegetables in the garbage because they are poisonous, but the truth is that we should take into account various nuances to avoid food waste in our daily life.
This is not nonsense. The fear of the emergence of this outbreak is not unfounded, but we have transferred the fear to the wrong food, since the real toxicity lies in the potato, not the onion. As for tubers, since it belongs to the nightshade family, potatoes naturally produce nitrogenous compounds called glycoalkaloids, which are a plant defense mechanism.
In this case, the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) very clearly indicate that taking 1 mg of this compound per kilogram of body weight is sufficient to suffer gastrointestinal effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
It is more dangerous When a potato is exposed to light and certain temperatures, as it germinates, the levels of these toxins skyrocket. And the most important thing is that cooking does not solve the problem, since peeling potatoes reduces glycoalkaloids between 25% and 75%, but only reduces them by 5% to 65%.
onion It does not have this toxicity problem, which means there is no research to show that even a sprouted onion is safe, since there is no toxic process that can harm us. Onion is not a nightshade and therefore, does not produce glycoalkaloids.
If we leave these processes aside and go to physiology, we find that when an onion grows a green stem, it does not rot, but rather it is simply a change in the role of the bulb from being a dormant organ to becoming an energy “source” that sustains the cell division that will grow the shoot. So it is something completely natural.
its taste. There is a fairly widespread perception of the smell of the onion when it reaches a more mature state with this characteristic green shoot, and the justification lies in the supposed “cost” of sugar for the growth of the shoot. But experts here point out that what the onion actually does when it sprouts is to mobilize and redistribute its carbohydrate reserves.
That is, the reserves are not disappearing, rather they will be redistributed towards the base of the onion to feed the growing layer. What the onion loses in this process is the dry and firm substance, which explains why its texture becomes more flabby or less crunchy.
Picture | Magda Ehlers
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