Why are these potatoes black under the skin?

young codger

I peeled a few potatoes and all but one of them have areas of black on them. I think it could be bruising caused by rough handling, but I am just guessing. I think they are Maris Piper. The black areas are not all the way through, but I have to peel about 3 or 4 layers off to get beyond the blackness.

young codger

Bought from SM. I managed to salvage most of the flesh. 

Dovefromabove

Yes that’s bruising. It can be caused by bad storage or often by being tipped out of sacks into wherever they’re being sold. 

I remember Bro telling me he’d had a bit of a go at a supermarket worker who was handling potatoes roughly, telling him to treat them just like apples. 

young codger

They were in a 2.5kg size pk. They may have gone from various size sorting processes  before endIng up in the bag.

It has happened  about 3 times/purchases now, so I will email the SM. I had put up with it the first couple times as they are  cheap enough. It is becoming annoying now, and time consuming peeling them down to undamaged flesh.

GemmaJF

I would guess the food in the SM at that moment is seeing more handling and possibly additional movement between stores. My son noticed a local SM only had food near the use by date last week, it suggests it was stock that had not sold at another branch, moved to the local one to make up for shortfalls.

Dovefromabove

Also there are folk doing jobs within organisations for which they’ve received no training. Office workers filling shelves ... council clerks emptying bins ...

wild edges

I know someone who stacks shelves at Morrisons who doesn't know what half the fruit and veg actually is and has even less of a clue about what they'd be used for or how they should be handled. I don't think his skill set is particularly uncommon in the industry either...

B3

I was in Sainsbury's when a manager type was explaining to a new recruit how to stack spuds. There were several bags of green potatoes which could have proved a risk to the partially sighted or the ignorant ( they had to put a warning on daffs to stop people eating them!). I mentioned this and she gave me a patronising yes madam we'll look into this answer and continued with her training exercise 
Well at least my conscience was clear😕

Dovefromabove

My brother (the potato farmer) was in a big chain supermarket with a group of Vegetable Managers and Buyers ... he saw that some of the potatoes (grown by him) were turning green under strong lights ... he said “hey look, these potatoes are green!”
”Don’t worry” said a Vegetable Manager ... “they’ll soon ripen under the lights”.  🤯

B3

That's the kind of ignorance that could be eradicated with a minimum of training.

Dovefromabove

Bro certainly made it known to the Big Bosses that training was needed!!!