Know any raw potato dish? Is consuming raw potato okay?
Even in the raw food crowd, raw potatoes seem to be unusual.
But I did find this recipe for raw potato salad.
Goddamnit it’s late and I’m tired and slightly peeved at my co-worker for being late in our carpool.
But Ray Jardine, backpacking guru, claims to use raw potatoes IIRC as part of his habit of including as much unprocessed whole foods as possible when backpacking. It might have been someone else, though. I think raw potatoes are nasty, and they don’t taste wholesome to me. I eat a lot of potatoes, too – I think they get bad press as being a junk vegetable, just starch, no nutritional value. Not true – fiber, potassium, vitamin C, whatever you want.
I’d like to hear more on the nutritional complements available in these uncooked tubers.
Uncooked tubers sounds like something a zombie might eat. We need to get rid of that phrase if raw potatoes are going to make any headway.
Then it’s on to kumquats.
Yes, er, I agree. Definitely on to kumquats, for sure, after the uncooked tubers.
What am I saying?? It’s not a toober!!! Who said you could have my kumquats! Run! Do it now!! Get to …
What?
potatoes are quite edible raw. I don’t care for them that way but others do.
I don’t have any recipes, but I quite like raw potatoes. Anytime I peel some for something else I always snack on some. I have been known to peel & eat a whole small one like an apple.
Developing the techniques to process tubers (including but not restricted to potatoes) was a necessary step to making them part of our ancestral diets. See here for example:
Potato starch polysaccharides are nearly completely undigestable by humans in raw form.
Eat much of it (more than say one small one) raw and those polysaccharides will very likely, upon hitting the large intestine, get fermented by bacteria, and the gas that such causes is not fun.
Potatoes are supposedly poisonous (see under “Toxicity”):
You seem to have overlooked the part where they mentioned wild potatoes and also where there are no cases of anyone dying of potato poisoning in the US in the last 50 years. If a potato has turned green, it probably isn’t a good idea to eat it if is cooked or raw.
The paper you are citing is 25 years old and out of date. Potatoes and other foods are digested in the lower intestine and the colon using a fermentation process. There are apparently health benefits in the low digestion rate.
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/resistantstarch.htm
I once had a 5 hour trip to take. Usually I’d chop up some carrots for snacking in the truck, but this time I had none. I figured, ‘what the hell, potatoes are root vegetables as well’ and chopped up some for the road. Hours 2-5 were spent driving along with the windows wide open, as I was trapped in the cab of the truck with my own horribly vile farts. Seriously, these were the worst smelling farts I’ve ever smelled, and I’ve set myself on fire with farts before, so I know what I’m talking about.
I do not recommend this experiment.
What would be the reason for raw potato dish being near non-existence? Taste and texture?
I was taught by my mother and grandmother not to eat raw potato because uncooked, they are or can be toxic. I’ve always failed in my attempts to convince this to others though.
Damn, I thought I was the only person in the world that did that. You would be amazed at the strange looks and responses I get when I mention I like raw potatoes … [try the different colors, they all taste different]
Hm, I never knew. I just like the taste. I feel that most raw food nuts are just that, nuts. I used to be on a raw lost back in the old usenet days and there were some serious freaking flakes on that list.
[moderating]
Moved thread to Cafe Society, where it can hang out with all the other food threads.
[/moderating]
So let’s look at that link’s references.
Hmm. A small amount, 5 grams, of lactulose, added to slow to digest corn starch, had some beneficial effects on glucose and insulin responses after meals. No report on how well tolerated the gas production was. A typical raw potato has about 40 grams of starch.
Another that shows that having 5.4% of the carbohydrate of a meal as resistant starch may help fat oxidation. Cooked potato has about 7% resistant starch.
So sure, a little bit of resistant starch fermenting away does some good things. Interesting that. A little gas we can tolerate (fermentation always produces gas). But nothing in your link supports eating the quantity of resistant starch that more than just a small amount of raw potato contains. Only the amount in cooked potatoes, or perhaps cooked and then cooled (which increases the resistant starch portion back up some small amount).
BTW inulin is another one of those indigestible polysaccharides that gets fermented with putative benefits. It is high in sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes). My wife bought some at the farmer’s market the other day and I made a nice side dish with 'em; I was up with gas pains and sleeping on the sofa all night. Gut fermentation good … but in very small doses.
Agreed, peeled or unpeeled. We used to eat them as a snack with salt. We also salted our apples. (Why would we do that? 
)
Do you mean to say they beat dill pickle farts?
Yup. They beat any other farts I’ve ever smelled.
I think every kid in the world has eaten raw potatoes. My mother used to tell a story of looking in the cabinet for potatoes, and finding a bite out of each one.
I still sneak a piece or two when preparing potatoes. It’s a very satisfying crunch, like water chestnuts.
One major factor (aside from indigestible polysaccharides and what happens in the lower intestine) against any raw potato preparation is that peeled potatoes darken to a nasty looking color when exposed to the air. I suppose you could put an acid-based dressing on them, but chances are the dressing would merely delay the discoloring. Leftovers would NOT be very appetizing!
~VOW