Author: Miss Cellania / Source: Neatorama
The Best of the Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Oh, the poor potato—a symbol of laziness (couch potato) and unhealthy eating (cheese fries). But it deserves much better. Here’s how the lowly potato altered the course of human history.
SPUDS OF THE INCAS
For at least 4,000 years, potatoes have been cultivated in the Peruvian Andes. The Incas called them papas, and although the flowers are toxic (they’re members of the deadly nightshade family), the part that grows underground -the tuber- is one of the healthiest foods humans have ever cultivated. Consider this: The average potato has only 100 calories, but provides 45% of the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamin C; 15% of vitamin B6; 15% of iodine; and 10% of niacin, iron, and copper. Potatoes are also high in potassium and fiber, with no fat and almost no sodium.
But the papas that the Incas cultivated looked more like purple golf balls than today’s potatoes. More than 5,000 different varieties grew in the Andes, and there were more than 1,000 Incan words to describe them. The potato was so integral to Incan culture that they buried their dead with potatoes (for food in the afterlife) and measured time based on how long it took a potato to cook.
THE EDIBLE STONE
When the Spanish conquistadors invaded the New World in the 1500s, they resisted this strange new food at first, not wanting to lower themselves to eating anything so “primitive.” But when their own food stores ran low, the Spaniards were forced to eat potatoes.
They liked them so much that they brought some tubers back to Europe in 1565.Europeans balked at what they called the “edible stone.” It was dirty, had poisonous leaves, and tasted horrible when eaten raw (which led to indigestion). The Catholic Church condemned potatoes as “unholy” because there was no mention of them in the Bible. Farmers started growing them, but only to feed livestock. It’s amazing that potatoes ever caught on, but thanks to a few key events, that’s exactly what happened.
KING’S EDICT: JUST EAT IT
The potato’s first big boost in Europe came from Frederick the Great, ruler of Prussia. In the 1740s, Prussia was mired in a war against Austria. Faced with the prospect of his nation’s crops (and food supply) being trampled by invading armies, Frederick urged his farmers to grow potatoes. Why? Because potatoes grow underground. A potato field could be marched over or even burned, and survive, where wheat and barley fields would be devastated.
But the Prussian people didn’t understand why the king wanted them to eat animal fodder, and most refused. So Frederick sent his personal chefs out to travel the countryside and distribute potato recipes to his subjects. When that didn’t work, he issued an edict that anyone who refused to eat potatoes would have their ears cut off. Potatoes caught on relatively quickly in Prussia after that.
PRISON FOOD
But they didn’t in France. Along with most other French people, King Louis XVI reviled the potato. “It has a pasty taste,” wrote an 18th-century French historian. “The natural insipidity, the unhealthy quality of this food, which is flatulent and indigestible, has caused it to be rejected from refined households.”
During the Seven Years War (1756–1763), a French pharmacist named Antoine Parmentier was imprisoned in Germany, where he was fed the same food as the pigs: potatoes. But when he was released, he felt stronger and healthier than before his imprisonment. He credited his health to the potato and became its biggest advocate. Granted an audience with the king, Parmentier told his prison story and urged him to fund a series of potato farms to feed the hungry. Louis was intrigued, but not enough to carry out Parmentier’s grand scheme. Instead, he donated a few acres of the worst possible land near Paris. Historically, nothing would grow there- nothing, that is, until Parmentier grew potatoes. They thrived.
But how would Parmentier convince his fellow citizens to eat them? Knowing that people usually want what they can’t have, Parmentier devised a plan. First, he positioned soldiers around his field in order to “protect” the valuable crop from theft. Second, he instructed the soldiers to take bribes and allow peasants to sneak in at night to steal the spuds. The plan worked, and within a few decades, potato farms became as common as wineries in France.
In 1767 Benjamin Franklin traveled to Paris, where he attended a banquet hosted by Parmentier consisting of nothing but potato dishes. Franklin was instantly won over by their taste and versatility and took some seedlings home to the Colonies, where he gave them to his friend, Thomas…
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