Tomato Seeds ok to eat?

VeggieMonster · Mar 12, 2003

I was looking through this page, <a href="http://www.lifepositive.com/Body/holistic-recipes/recipes/rawfood.asp" target="_blank">http://www.lifepositive.com/Body/hol...es/rawfood.asp</a>, and it mentioned "Sprouted potato and tomato seeds, however, should be avoided as they are poisonous." Are tomato seeds really bad?? I've never heard this. Just as I finished eating my sandwich (with lots of seeds cuz I was too lazy to take them out) I read that. 
Maybe I should call poison control and see what they say... 
i'm starting to feel poison kick in... 
phone too far to call poison control.... 
life flashing before e....

Seadolphin · Mar 12, 2003

I've never heard that. Sounds kinda bizzare though!

WonderRandy · Mar 12, 2003

you'll notice it said "sprouted" seeds. Both Tomatoes and Potatoes are members of the Nightshade family of plants and the leaves and stems are poisonous. I don't know how toxic they are tho...

spud · Mar 12, 2003

It's not a good idea to 'sprout' them, and a 'potato seed' is a potato! 
When it sprouts 'eyes' appear and then sprouts, which is a good time to plant it in the ground to make clusters of new potatoes. It's poisonous at that stage in the green areas, do not eat it. 
I've heard it said that sometimes appendicitus is caused by a tomato seed being trapped in the appendix, but it's only hearsay. I never de-seed my tomatoes.

mushroom · Mar 12, 2003

I've always eaten tomato seeds and as for potatoes, I remember knocking the "branches" off of them and handing them to my mother to cook, so I know that we ate the eyes...here I am 35 years later.

1vegan · Mar 12, 2003

Its the sprouted part that is poisonous, like WonderRandy says. 
The green parts of the plant contains solanoide (or something that sounds like that). 
With potatoes you should watch out for the green skin. 
When potatoes are in the sun to long, the skin turns green. The green part can be poisonous.

spud · Mar 12, 2003

I've eaten potato eyes too, but the eyes can often go hand in hand with green patches, and those green bits are definitely dodgy. [Although I cut green chunks off and eat the rest of the potato anyway, it isn't recommended.] Mostly I plant the ones that sprout. Potatoes are so willing, they grow anywhere. Incuding in my compost heaps sometimes when the cut off chunks have gone on growing. I've never eaten the white sprouts though.

VeggieMonster · Mar 12, 2003

Phew.. false alarm then, looks like i'm gonna make it after all. <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="/images/smilies/smiley.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="

"> 
I didnt realize that article meant sprouted tomato seeds... hehe

soilman · Mar 13, 2003

Most of the tomato seeds you eat when you eat tomatoes, never get well chewed, their skins prevent them from being chewed or digested, so any toxins in them don't get to you in any significant amount. However because of the solanace alkaloid possibility, I would avoid chewing and swallowing a handful of dry tomato seeds, or sprouted tomato seeds, and I certainly wouldn't eat tomato-seed puree or "butter." I think they tast very bitter -- which is a characteristic of toxic alkaloids as well as harmless alkaloids -- bitterness.

soilman · Mar 13, 2003

"a 'potato seed' is a potato!" 
Not really. Potatoes produce little fruits, just like tomato plants, which contain seeds. They are difficult to work with so it is easier to reproduce potatoes by vegetative reproduction -- produce clones -- while potatoes used for thes purpose are, in the context of farming, called "seed" potatoes (as opposed to potato seeds), in the context of plant anatomy and physiology, they are not seeds but tubers I think (I'm not sure exactly what tuber means), and in the context of plant physiology and anatomy the potato seeds are in the fruits. Which only mature long after the plant is pulled out and the tubers are dug up, so saving seeds would require putting aside a separate group of plants for seed production; you couldn't easily use the same plants you harvested tubers from.

1vegan · Mar 13, 2003

Almost right. 
Potato's are energy that is stored in the roots of the plant. 
My potato plants produce seed-bulbs, before potato's are fully grown.

soilman · Mar 13, 2003

"Almost right. Potatoes are energy that is stored in the roots of the plant." 
Huh? They look like matter to me, not energy. 
And what did i say that I was mistaken about?

1vegan · Mar 14, 2003

What we call potato is "the battery" of the plant. 
The starch(?) is the energy source for re-growing after winter. 
Sorry for missing the word "mature" in your earlier post.

soilman · Mar 15, 2003

1vegan writes: 
========== 
What we call potato is "the battery" of the plant. 
The starch(?) is the energy source for re-growing after winter. 
=========== 
Well, that sound a bit simplistic. Besides having potential energy in the form of matter (starch) that can be oxidized, if oxygen is available as well (batteries have everything they need to produce energy right in them, they are self-contained energy producers -- a potato, requiring that oxygen be mixed with it before energy can be produced, might be better analogized as being the gasoline of the plant, than as the battery. 
Potatoes, as you indicated, also serve as sources of cells for vegetative reproduction -- cloning of a new plant after the winter. I can't think of a mechanistic analogy for vegetative reproduction -- reproduction is one of the things that distinguishes the living from the non-living: I've never heard of a battery that makes battery factories that then make more batteries. 
By the way, if you were really strictly vegan, you might want to avoid eating peas. Pea plants are carnivorous predators. Sprouting pea-seeds exude a sticky substance that traps insects that live in the soil, which results in the insects' early demise, and which enables the growing pea plant to "eat" them. Pea plants have very high nitrogen requirements, and decaying animals produce more nitrogen than decaying plants. If baby pea plants didn't kill insects, they might not survive long enough to become young-child pea plants. By choosing to eat a pea instead of a potato, you are choosing to kill more insects. Soil-crawling insects are the "hidden animal ingredients" of pea plants. 
Of course once the pea root system reaches a certain size, and develops a greatly increased surface area for absorbtion of soil nitrates, it no longer needs to kill insects to get enough nitrogen. But if it wants to live long enough to develop an adequate root system, it may have to depend on it ability to kill insects, until that time.

1vegan · Mar 17, 2003

Yes it was simplistic, I was at an public access point. 
The thing about peas is new to me, do you have a source that I can look up to learn more about it? 
It could become a problem because I use "peas" as an natural fertilzer source. (nitrogen in the roots). 
I'm afraid I'm not able to live up to veganism in that extend, because some worms get killed when I harvest the potato's. 
I cannot "afford" to be a fruitarian.

soilman · Mar 18, 2003

I was not suggesting that, in order to avoid harming insects, anyone should go so far as to avoid eating peas, or avoid using peas straw to add organic matter to the soil. Personally, I grow peas as a cover crop and green manure. While I know this fact about pea carnivorism, there may be 50 other plants that are also carnivorous, that I don't know about. If I don't eat until i research all 50 plants, I'll never get time to eat.

gardner · Mar 5, 2014

<div class="quote-container" data-huddler-embed="/t/934/tomato-seeds-ok-to-eat#post_29831" data-huddler-embed-placeholder="false">Quote:
<div class="quote-block">Originally Posted by spud <a href="/t/934/tomato-seeds-ok-to-eat#post_29831"><img alt="View Post" src="/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style=""></a> 
a 'potato seed' is a potato! 
</div>
<div class="quote-block"> </div>
</div>
 potatoes make seeds just like all flowering plants.... flowers precede the fruit, which contains the seeds..., potato plants can be CLONED off any tuber piece with eyes but there is a fruit made after the flowers are pollinated. no diss just the truth

Auxin · Mar 5, 2014

lol @ 11 year old thread
 
In practice 'potato seed' almost always refers to seed potatoes.
You'll never see genuine potato seeds in a packet on the seed rack, as theyre only used for breeding.
However, seed potatoes tend to be small and have high levels of the toxic potato alkaloids in the first several mm under the surface (a sizable amount of their mass).
 
Tomato seeds are edible, an edible oil is extracted from them, and the green parts of a tomato plant being poisonous is merely a very old myth. Green tomatoes are edible (Fried Green Tomatoes wasnt just a funny old movie), as are tomato leaves, both are used as food and as medicine. Modern researchers are studying it as a functional food to reduce cancer incidence and cholesterol, making them acceptable to consumers is the rub. Huge quantities may cause toxicity but, frankly, in a unprocessed state they taste too bitter and metallic for people to eat that much (with the exception of a few peruvian tribes who loves that flavor).
 
Day before the first freeze I harvest all my very unripe cherry tomatoes and lacto-ferment them with oregano flowers. At first theyre still bitter and are very effective at stimulating appetite, after aging a few months the bitterness fades and theyre almost like low fat olives.

Tomato Seeds ok to eat?

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