What causes some crisps to turn green?
You’ll be relieved to learn that it is not a dangerous or overly worrying situation.
Co-host Matt Tebbutt went to a farm in Norfolk to get an explanation, and it’s quite straightforward.
Potatoes grow underground and are therefore shielded from sunlight. But if a portion of them begins to emerge above ground, they become exposed to light and begin to change color.
Chlorophyll, a pigment that is intensified by light, is what causes the green color, so that is what gives it its explanation.
Did you know that Frito-Lay alone sells somewhere around $2. There’s a reason they’re regarded as the best potato chips in the nation: they sell 6 billion pounds of potato chips annually. When you combine all of our favorite potato chips, you might be able to understand why Americans consume more chips than any other nation in the world. There’s no denying that everyone enjoys a bag of salty, crunchy chips, but the possibility of discovering green potato chips in your bag is always present. So, whats up with that?.
Revealed: Why some crisps turn green (and whether eating them will REALLY make you sick)
The common saying on playgrounds is “don’t eat green crisps, they’ll make you sick.”
However, a Channel 4 program has revealed that there is some truth to the popular myth, though it would take eating a lot of them to become ill.
On last night’s Food Unwrapped, co-presenter Matt Tebbutt decided to look into the puzzling phenomenon, which causes some crisps to turn green.
On last night’s episode of Food Unwrapped, Matt Tebbutt (pictured) investigated the causes of some crisps turning green.
In playgrounds, green crisps are feared, as Twitter user JNG recalled. The dreaded green crisp used to scare me the most as a child, he said.
A viewer on last night’s program asked whether the green tint on some crisps was simply bruising before the segment began.
However, Tebbutt learned when he went to a farm in Norfolk that potatoes can turn green when they are exposed to light.
Chlorophyll, the substance responsible for the potato’s green color, is safe by itself.
However, the toxin solanine, which is also produced by deadly nightshade, can be found in chlorophyll.
Matt Tebbutt captured footage of factory employees carefully inspecting hand-cooked luxury crisps for any green tinges or other flaws.
Food Unwrapped reported during its filming at a crisp factory that one whole potato is contained in a 40g packet of crisps.
The Norfolk potato farmer warned Tebbutt that eating too much of it would make him feel unwell.
Tebbutt claims that despite the toxin being poisonous, it would take eating one large, entirely green potato for you to become ill.
Factory workers thoroughly inspect potatoes before they are made into crisps, tossing out any with a green tinge. The rejected ones are then used for animal feed.
However, due to the fact that millions of packets of crisps are produced each year, a few sly green potatoes always manage to escape detection, which is why some crisps end up being green.
However, more stringent quality controls have made the odd coloured crisps increasingly scarce.
You hardly ever see a green crisp these days; when I was a child, they used to be all over the store, Tebbutt observed.
Food Unwrapped airs on Channel 4 on Mondays at 20.30.