Spud We Really Like – Things you may not know about the Potato
The potato.
A remarkable thing.
It’s a vegetable, which might surprise anyone who says they don’t like veg, whilst stuffing their face with chips. In fact, it was the first vegetable to go to space when experimental seed potatoes were sent into orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1995. It is not known, however, if they survived when the Colombia broke up during re-entry in 2003, but presumably those potatoes can be said to have well and truly had their chips.
The average spud is about 100 calories and highly nutritious as they contain vitamins B and C, potassium, iron, protein, fibre and are 99.9% fat-free. They are reckoned to be the food of choice, should you suddenly decide you only eat one type of food. You can survive on eating nothing but potatoes, as Chris Voigt, from the Washington State Potato Commission, found out when he went on a potato-only diet for 2 months as a marketing gimmick “to remind people about the nutritional value of potatoes.” He surprised himself at his health check at the end of his mono-fast, as he was found to have lost 10kg in weight and considerably reduced his cholesterol level.
Sir Francis Drake is commonly credited with bringing the potato into England, but he didn’t. It turns out that all those school history books were wrong. The potato first came into Europe in 1570, brought back by conquistadors returning to Spain from South America. They found that the Incas had been happily munching potatoes in Peru for the last 8000 years. The Spanish King had probably asked his troops to keep an eye open for anything made of gold, but if they came across any interesting new foods, perhaps something that would go well with a beef patty, or fried fish for instance, bring that back too. But it wasn’t all take. They did give the Inca population, measles, and gonorrhoea.
The Spanish loved the potato and it soon started to spread around Europe before arriving in Britain in 1588.
What sealed its success was that it was easy to grow, coped well with our generally damp climate, and proved to be the best crop to feed families with small gardens, as the yield was very high. You can grow up to 10 potatoes from a single plant.
In Ireland, the country quickly adopted the potato as the crop to grow, since one acre of potatoes and the milk from a single cow was enough to feed a large family. However, the potato famine of 1847 changed it all. It caused over a million deaths and drove over a million and a half to emigrate to America. In fact, it had such a profound impact that over 170 years later, the population has still not recovered to its prefamine level.
Globally, over 80% of the potato crop can be used for human consumption, which is far more than that for harvests of wheat and corn. The UN has been promoting the potato as the best crop to improve food security in developing countries.
The UK’s most popular potato is the Maris Piper, but can it hold out against new varieties, which can be genetically pre-programmed to resist infection and disease? If we are to become truly spud-smart, we may have to develop potatoes that incorporate health giving properties within their makeup.
In 2014 an American company developed a genetically modified potato that lowered the eater’s chance of developing cancer. Fancy a bowl of mash with a built-in corona virus inoculation? Or how-about drinking alcohol made from potatoes with a built-in hangover cure? One day, in the not-too-distant-future, it has been predicted that we may be able to buy potatoes enhanced with mood altering drugs such as THC and MDMA which will give a whole different interpretation to the name, Spud-You-Like.
Written by Jerry Short
Jerry is a freelance writer, who has worked as a wildlife film producer for the BBC, a journalist, a musician and a narrator. He has a lifelong interest in science, has been stalked by lions, swum with sharks and is addicted to watching cookery programmes and is definitely a "foodie". His heroes are Douglas Adams and Charles Darwin.