Green with envy

But where were all of you last Friday, when I was standing over a packet of peaky-looking spuds saying, "Meh, I'm sure it'll be fine"?

Had one of you piped up, even just with some mild doubt, even just with a "green potatoes, Lauren? Does that SOUND like a delicious dinner?" then you could have saved me a week of not-so delicious debilitating nausea. I hope you feel suitably guilty.

I've always had a laissez-faire attitude towards food safety.

Partly under a mistaken belief that it makes me seem endearingly low-maintenance, but mainly because when given the choice of eating food or not eating food, I will always choose eating it.

Whenever I hear a fact that widens my scope for risky food consumption, however suspect the source, I take it into my heart and cherish it.

The time someone told me "sell-by dates are just a ploy by the government to make us eat more food" was a particular high.

The day I learned the three-second rule* was a life changer.

And green potatoes I honestly thought were an old wives' tale, like crusts making your hair curl or Alan Titchmarsh being attractive.

I was the kid at school who everyone would give their green crisps to eat, like a playground sideshow act, and as far as I can remember it never did me any harm.

After all, green is the colour of health.

For all I could see, green potatoes might count as one of my five a day, like spinach or something.

My logic went: green bananas are nice.

Greenness is a good attribute.

Think of Green Onions by Booker T and the Mgs - good song.

No food poisoning in that track (yes it's instrumental, but hush).

I also looked to a literary authority for advice - namely, Dr Seuss, whose classic "Green Eggs and Ham" I could only see as endorsement of my off-colour dinner.

Eggs are, after all, even less likely to be green than potatoes.

They're not even vegetables.

But Sam I Am likes them, and from what I can remember he doesn't die at the end of the book. So I ate them.