Would you like purple fries with that?

Yes, you read it correctly. An English supermarket is set to offer purple potatoes, including all of their related products such as fries, mash and crisps (chips).

It might seem a challenge to make chips even more popular than they are, but Sainsbury’s is having a go.

From today, it is selling purple potatoes which carry their deep hue to the core.

The colour survives the cooking process to provide purple chips, baked potatoes and even roasties and mash - which all taste the same as the familiar creamy white type.

As a bonus, the spectacular potatoes are packed with healthy anthocyanin, which gives blueberries, blackberries and aubergines their distinctive tints.

Anthocyanin is a powerful antioxidant which protects cells from damage and so may prevent cancer. Consumption of it is also thought to have many other beneficial effects.

In nature there are thousands of varieties of potatoes, many having deep red and purple flesh. The new Purple Majesty has been crossed from these original strains by a team of experts at Colorado University.

It is being grown in Scotland by the Albert Bartlett company.

Only 400 tons have been grown this year, which means supplies will be limited, but a bigger crop is planned next year.

There's more at the link.

Visually different, certainly . . . but I hope the color doesn't run. Mothers everywhere have had to clean up their kids after ketchup, mustard and other condiments have dripped from fries onto their clothing (to say nothing of the fries themselves ending up tracked into the carpet!). If they now have to put up with purple fry-splotches on top of everything else, I predict a short and unsuccessful sales career for Purple Majesty!





Peter