Someone I know not well enough to voice my opinion on the subject said something like why didn’t God make potatoes a low-calorie food so I am here to say: God made them like that because their nutrition density IS what makes them healthy. By God I mean Andean agricultural technicians. Potato is healthy BECAUSE potato holds calories and vitamins. Do not malign potato
For all evolutionary history, life has struggled against calorie deficit… So much energy goes into finding food that there is no time for anything else. Our ancestors selectively bred root vegetables to create the potato, so that we might be the first species whose daily existence doesn’t consist of trying to find the nutrients necessary for survival. One potato can rival the calorie count of many hours of foraging… Eat a potato, and you free up so much time to create and build and connect with your fellow man. Without potato where would you be?? Do not stand on the shoulders of giants and think thyself tall!!
I nearly teared up reading “Andean agricultural technicians” bc fuck yes! these were members of Pre-Inca cultures who lived 7 to 10 thousand years ago, and they were scientists! food scientists and researchers and farmers whose names and language we can never know, who lived an inconceivably long time ago (pre-dating ancient civilizations in Egypt, China, India, Greece, and even some parts of Mesopotamia) and we are separated by millennia of time and history, but still for thousands of years the
fruitsvegetables of their labor and research have continued to nourish countless human lives, how is that not the most earthly form of a true miracle??? anyway yes potatoes are beautiful, salute their creators.There are approximately 4000 varieties of potato in Peru. I’ve seen an incredible variety of corn and tomatoes, and root vegetables I’ve never seen before, on the local farmer markets. Yet some expats insist on buying only imported, expensive American brands of canned veggies… 🤷🏼♀️ Peruvian potatoes 👇🏼
It is long since time for us to start viewing plant domestication as the bioscience that it is. Because while the Andeans were creating potatoes, the ancient Mesoamericans were turning teosinte into corn:
And then there’s bananas, from Papua New Guinea:
These were not small, random changes, this was real concerted effort over years to turn inedible things into highly edible ones. And I’m convinced the main reason we’re reluctant to call them scientific achievements is, well, a racist one.
Potatoes used to be poisonous!
They contain alkaloid toxins. They still do, in smaller amounts! They are produced when potatoes are exposed to the sun, to protect the tuber from being eaten. That’s why you shouldn’t eat green potatoes. It’s also proof that 18th century French peasants weren’t simply being silly or superstitious when they refused to eat potatoes: potatoes did at one point contain toxins, just like other nightshades! They were making a logical assumption. It was wrong, but it was logical!
I’m not sure if this research is still “up to date” since I did it close to ten years ago now, but the belief was that ancient Incans saw alpaca and other animals licking clay while eating toxic tubers. The animals were fine. So the people followed their lead.
Turns out, certain kinds of clay are really good at absorbing certain plant toxins (specifically negative charge toxins). So the clay rendered the proto-potatoes edible and non-deadly! It is believed that by observing and following their lead, ancient Incans gained access to a valuable crop. To this day, there is a traditional potato dish that involves dipping potato in a sauce made of chaco clay, water, and salt. This dish is likely thousands of years old, and may be why we are able to eat potatoes today. (Oh - one of the two alkaloid toxins produced by potatoes is called chaconine!)
Over time, ancient farmers bred less toxic potatoes, until we arrived at the current starchy miracle food we all know and love!
And the reason potatoes in places like Europe and North America seem to lack such beautiful diversity, as seen in the photo above, is because potatoes are often grown from “seed potatoes” rather than from seed. This means that most potatoes you eat are actually clones propagated from a plant possibly hundreds of years old. It also means there is very little to no genetic diversity in a field of potatoes.
And that’s why the potato blight that swept Ireland in the 1840s was so devastating. The potatoes had no genetic diversity to help resist. And then the English swept in and used that to starve the Irish and that’s why my Nanny’s ancestors moved to Canada, and here I am, talking about potatoes again.
P o t a t
(via radley-writes)