Jun 21, 2024 05:52 PM
https://www.wired.com/story/potatoes-are...hem-wrong/
EXCERPTS: . . . the potato has had a spectacular fall from grace. Once this miraculous nutrient-dense vegetable was the fuel of human civilization. Now the spud in the US has become synonymous with a garbage, industrialized food system that pours profits into a handful of companies at the expense of people’s health.
America’s favorite vegetable is facing a Sophie’s Choice moment. Should we accept that fresh spuds have lost the fight against the tide of fries, hash browns, and waffles, or is there hope for a potato renaissance? Can the humble spud achieve the rehabilitation it deserves?
[...] Potatoes aren’t just amazing from a nutritional point of view—they are one of the original disruptive food technologies. First domesticated in the Andes and then brought to Europe by Spanish colonizers in the mid-1500s, wherever potatoes were grown they supercharged local societies. Potatoes were well suited to growing in cool, wet, European climates and produced veritable bounties compared with established crops like wheat, barley, and oats.
An acre of field could serve up over 10 metric tons of potatoes, according to the diary of an 18th-century British farmer. The same area of wheat would yield only 650 kilograms, so it’s little wonder that leading thinkers started singing the potato’s praises. “No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution,” wrote the philosopher Adam Smith in his influential treatise The Wealth of Nations.
[...] The same qualities that made potatoes a runaway success in Europe—their cheapness, ubiquity, and nutritional density—are a large part of why in recent years they have acquired the status of a second-class vegetable. One Danish observational study found that eating a lot of potatoes—unlike other vegetables—was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Other studies have found that potato consumption is linked to cardio-metabolic risk factors like high blood pressure and cholesterol, but the evidence on whether this leads to more disease and deaths is murky.
The issue is that the way we eat potatoes has changed. Americans now eat 21 pounds of frozen (mostly fried) potatoes and a further 3.7 pounds of potato chips each year. And while deep-frying potatoes doesn’t deplete their nutritional content (it actually increases levels of dietary fiber), it does add a whole bunch of fat and salt, which we know are bad. The problem is that the potato industry is dependent on these deep-fried products, which are a major growth area, while fresh potato sales continue to decline.
“I hate it when we try to simplify things and put healthy foods over here and unhealthy foods over there,” says Voigt. “You really have to look at the entire diet that you’re consuming. That’s my philosophy on it.” But recent growth in frozen potatoes is buoyed by all-day breakfasts and a vogue for loaded fries, which skews the equation firmly to the unhealthy side of the balance.
The shift in consumption also means that the frozen potato processors have a lot of sway over how potatoes are perceived in the US...(MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . the potato has had a spectacular fall from grace. Once this miraculous nutrient-dense vegetable was the fuel of human civilization. Now the spud in the US has become synonymous with a garbage, industrialized food system that pours profits into a handful of companies at the expense of people’s health.
America’s favorite vegetable is facing a Sophie’s Choice moment. Should we accept that fresh spuds have lost the fight against the tide of fries, hash browns, and waffles, or is there hope for a potato renaissance? Can the humble spud achieve the rehabilitation it deserves?
[...] Potatoes aren’t just amazing from a nutritional point of view—they are one of the original disruptive food technologies. First domesticated in the Andes and then brought to Europe by Spanish colonizers in the mid-1500s, wherever potatoes were grown they supercharged local societies. Potatoes were well suited to growing in cool, wet, European climates and produced veritable bounties compared with established crops like wheat, barley, and oats.
An acre of field could serve up over 10 metric tons of potatoes, according to the diary of an 18th-century British farmer. The same area of wheat would yield only 650 kilograms, so it’s little wonder that leading thinkers started singing the potato’s praises. “No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution,” wrote the philosopher Adam Smith in his influential treatise The Wealth of Nations.
[...] The same qualities that made potatoes a runaway success in Europe—their cheapness, ubiquity, and nutritional density—are a large part of why in recent years they have acquired the status of a second-class vegetable. One Danish observational study found that eating a lot of potatoes—unlike other vegetables—was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Other studies have found that potato consumption is linked to cardio-metabolic risk factors like high blood pressure and cholesterol, but the evidence on whether this leads to more disease and deaths is murky.
The issue is that the way we eat potatoes has changed. Americans now eat 21 pounds of frozen (mostly fried) potatoes and a further 3.7 pounds of potato chips each year. And while deep-frying potatoes doesn’t deplete their nutritional content (it actually increases levels of dietary fiber), it does add a whole bunch of fat and salt, which we know are bad. The problem is that the potato industry is dependent on these deep-fried products, which are a major growth area, while fresh potato sales continue to decline.
“I hate it when we try to simplify things and put healthy foods over here and unhealthy foods over there,” says Voigt. “You really have to look at the entire diet that you’re consuming. That’s my philosophy on it.” But recent growth in frozen potatoes is buoyed by all-day breakfasts and a vogue for loaded fries, which skews the equation firmly to the unhealthy side of the balance.
The shift in consumption also means that the frozen potato processors have a lot of sway over how potatoes are perceived in the US...(MORE - missing details)
![[Image: GHheDwx.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/GHheDwx.jpeg)