 Are green potato chips bad for you? As a kid, I was told that green potatoes are poisonous and as a result I avoid the occasional green potato chip like the plague. But is this just an urban myth or is there something to it? As it turns out, the green bits really do contain toxins, but how risky does that make them? Potatoes are members of the nightshade family. And having grown up around deadly nightshade, that's enough to get me sweating. Apart from the fact that tomatoes, bell peppers and eggplants are all members of the same family. However, plants in the nightshade family do have a tendency to produce poisonous chemicals called toxic glycoalkaloids or TGA's for short. And potatoes are no exception. Potatoes contain the TGA's solanine and chakonine. The bad news is that these are neurotoxins and have also been known to cause cardiac and gastrointestinal disorders. The good news though is that potatoes typically don't contain enough of the compounds to be anywhere near harmful. But when potatoes are exposed to light, things begin to get out of whack. Green and chakonine begin to build up. At the same time, the amount of chlorophyll, the substance that makes leaves green, also increases. Of course, chlorophyll isn't poisonous, but the green tinge it creates does signal the increased presence of the compounds that are. So am I right then to fear green potato chips? As with other health risks, it all comes down to dose. There have been cases of people being poisoned by eating too many green potatoes, but you have to eat a lot of them. When it comes to green potato chips, the scientific literature is a little vague though, and running the numbers is made complicated as peeling and frying potatoes reduce the amount of TGA's in them. There are studies suggesting around 3mg of TDA's for every kilogram you weigh is not good news. To put this into context, if you weigh around 70kg or just over 150lbs, you'd have to eat well over 1000 green potato chips in a single sitting. That is the equivalent of over 60 small bags of potato chips, a feat that would have you in serious trouble from the fat and the salt they contain long before the toxins get you. Not that you're likely to attempt this anyway, a solanine and charkanine also happen to taste really bad. On the flip side, both of these glycoalkaloids have been studied as potential cancer treatments. Not that eating green potato chips is ever going to be a recommended cure for cancer, but it just goes to show that things are never as black and white or green in this case as they might seem when it comes to risks and benefits. In other words, the odd green chip isn't likely to hurt you. Despite elevated levels of hazardous chemicals, the exposure is just too low to be a problem. That said, you probably don't want to go on a green chip eating binge just in case. If you have any other topics you'd like risk buys to cover, please do drop us a note in the comments. Otherwise, see you next week and stay safe.