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Potatos are poisonous. Well, at least the sprouts are, as they contain alkalines. So, there was good reason to believe they were poisonous, especially in those days when they were probably not eaten fresh.
So are the green bits, so don’t be eating potatos that have been sitting in the light and have turned green.
Is there a non-deadly Nightshade, or why is it always called ‘Deadly Nightshade’? Is it a “Sunny Morecambe” type situation?
On the kids show Arthur, they did a skit about this.
They said the green ones are hamrless unless you eat 1,000 of them.
Cecil has covered this, pretty much, in:
Are green potato chips poisonous? and in Is it true all the vitamins in potatoes, apples, etc., are in the skin?
Cecil has covered the toxicity of green spuds. Are green potato chips poisonous?
One of these days, I"m going to have to learn how to use that preview button.
OK, that covers green spuds, but no mention of those nasty “eyes.”
The Dutch don’t eat (just) mayonnaise, it’s mayo-like with a healthy dose of garlic added to give the crap flavour. It tastes better than ketchup or (yuch) vinegar!
PS One of the reasons the Spanish thought the potato was poisonous was not so much the bitterness and the green rind of the tubers, but because the fruit are somewhat poisonous (&, not knowing what the plant was about, people assumed that it was the fruit they were to eat).
This is a minor hijack, but the toxins you’re talking about are called alkaloids, which are nitrogen-containing organic bases produced by plants. An alkali (base), on the other hand, is any substances with a pH higher than 7. All alkaloids are alkaline, and many (all?) are poisonous. However, not all alkalis are poisonous.