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[Rolan7]

Oh riiiight they're like nightshade, I forgot about that.
I wasn't planning to chew the greens, but good to remember anyway thanks.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Wait what was that about poison

[Rolan7]

Potatoes and tomatoes are literally nightshade plants.  Their eyes, greens, and skins contain neurotoxin.
Mainly the unpeeled potatoes though.  If you eat about a kilogram of them, particularly without cutting any eyes out, you might be in for gastric distress.  Much more than that could be dangerous.

Apparently they contain small amounts of nicotine too!  Also everything I just said is from one website that could be wrong.

[GiglameshDespair]

Green potatoes contain Solanine. It's also found in the stems and leaves, which is why you shouldn't eat those. Potatoes exposed to light or extreme temperatures produce Solanine. The green colour is actually from bog standard chlorophyll, but it's a good warning sign. You'd not be able to eat a poisonous amount by accident, that's for sure - you need a decent amount and it's horribly bitter.
It gives you the shits and in large enough quantities affects the nervous system.

Tomatoes were believed to be deadly to eat in Europe for a long time, presumably until someone actually ate one and didn't die. Tomatoes also have poisonous stems and leaves, much like the potatoes, but the fruit does not.

[hops]

I always wondered if you can make your homemade poison with potatoes, but then it turned out there are other, easier way to poison someone.

[WillowLuman]

Antifreeze, for one. Also, I probably just made a government watchlist.

[GiglameshDespair]

If you want to kill someone, poison probably isn't the way to do it.
Just feed them something like lutefisk and they'll want to die anyway.

[Akura]

I always wondered if you can make your homemade poison with potatoes, but then it turned out there are other, easier way to poison someone.

Well, if you want a slow poison, all you need is a bit of oil, some salt, and some sour cream.

Antifreeze, for one. Also, I probably just made a government watchlist.

It's Bay12. We're ALL on a government watchlist.

[TD1]

If you want to kill someone, earn their trust and then, for example, bring them on a walk along the cliffs before giving one nice little shove. Then act distraught afterwards.

[EnigmaticHat]

I kind of expected a joke there rather than a legitimate way of killing someone.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

I kind of expected a joke there rather than a legitimate way of killing someone.

That's the joke.

[WillowLuman]

Why are we talking about murdering people in the happy thread?

[Graknorke]

Not every murder has to be a sad murder, Hugo.

[scrdest]

Green potatoes contain Solanine.

It gives you the shits and in large enough quantities affects the nervous system.

It does not, however, turn you into a zombie, Max Brooks.

[Culise]

Tomatoes were believed to be deadly to eat in Europe for a long time, presumably until someone actually ate one and didn't die. Tomatoes also have poisonous stems and leaves, much like the potatoes, but the fruit does not.

Well, it'd already been cultivated for food for almost two millenia in the New World by the time Europeans first encountered them, so that was a bit of a help.  You can thank Gerard for the notion that it was poisonous, and that only in the Anglosphere.  It was more popular right off the bat for food in Spain (likely due in part to it being the initial European stopping point for the Columbian Exchange, and where it was apparently first compared to eggplants) and the Near East.  Tomatoes are also not nearly as dangerous as most other nightshades; it is possible to kill yourself with them, but you'd need to eat quite a bit of their greens.  Fried green tomatoes are actually a thing, after all.

It is kinda weird to think about how many foods we think of as culinary staples today are relatively young introductions.  Swiss or Belgian chocolate?  Irish potatoes or Italian tomatoes?  Turkeys anywhere?  Pretty much any sort of spicy kimchi?  All sourced in the New World, and all completely unknown in Eurafrasia before the closing years of the 15th century. 

EDIT: Minor correction on curry; spicy curry is perfectly Old World in scope.