Potatoes

My last post made me think of something I wanted to share. Did you know that potatoes made the industrial revolution possible? Potatoes were introduced to Europe from America, and they are a high-caloric, easy-to-grow food source. If cooked properly, they also have a lot of vitamins (in the skin). The introduction of the potato during the agricultural revolution gave peasants a much-improved staple crop, which helped create a surplus population later harnessed into the factory system.

Of course, potatoes have their down side as well. In Ireland, the average adult male ate about six kilos of potatoes every day. Women and children over ten ate about five kilos, and children younger than ten about two. They completely depended on it for their sustenance. When the Irish potato famine hit in the middle of the nineteenth century, it killed a million people and forced a million more to emigrate. One more reason not to rely on a single crop.

Today, we live in a very different (and much more sedentary) society, where potatoes provide too many calories for us. If we worked the fields, they would be great. But mostly we sit in offices, and a starchy, high-calorie food is not what we need. But mashed potatoes are yummy. . . .

See? When you come to my blog you just might learn something new.