Purple Chinese Space Potatoes: Yum? February 15, 2007
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Hungry and stupid? Sit down, my friend, as I have a dish that's perfect for you: Chinese purple space potatoes! Grown from seeds that were mutated when exposed to cosmic radiation while up in a Chinese spacecraft, these wacky spuds can't be any more dangerous than a bag of Doritos and a 2-litre bottle of Pepsi, but that isn't saying much.
Apparently these things are all the rage in Shanghai. I'll take your word on the flavor, thanks. –Adam Frucci
CNN [via The Raw Feed]
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
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Comments
Ho hum, good try and it's not even April 1st!! Check your seed catalogues and you'll find that these hae been available for many years. They are quite natural and haven't been anywhere near space
They did not say that the colour was due to the trip to space, people just assume this. Many companies and space agencies have sent seeds to space, some for marketing purposes like this while others hope that the radiation and cosmic rays will increase the mutation rate and one of the new traits will provide a marketable one. The Chinese, I seem to recall, have been hopeful that it would result in all the benefits of genetic modification without the slow and costly work of actually doing the research. By choosing a purple variety of potato they at least get to market the astrospuds which don't become 10 foot tall super spuds as something novel and without actually lying. They are purple and their seeds did go into space.
Even for people who know that the colour is not from their space trip they may want to buy space spuds anyway. Kind of like people who put spiders in the microwave and then try to get the little creepies (now dead) to bite them so they might get super powers. Hey sure it is stupid but if you don't try it it won't work either.