The Great New Food That Has Made History

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 199, 24 August 1942, Page 2

The Great New Food That Has Made History

By Cyrano

New Zealanders have taken potatoes as much for granted as bread. No doubt from time to time, when prices rose exceptionally, some of us have done with less, though possibly we have not all been aware of it, but. generally speaking, potatoes have just been there. Housewives may have been worried occasionally, but the rest of us sat down to our potatoes, boiled, baked, chipped, or mashed, with little or no thought of where they came from, or whether the supply might not go on for ever. Now we are told potatoes are short, and we must be careful.

The spread of the potato from America is one of the great economic developments of history. To-day the potato ranks next to the main cereals in importance as food, but it wasn't introcfuced into Europe till the sixteenth century; it took a long time to become popular; and it wasn't till the middle of the nineteenth century that attempts were made to improve its quality and cropping. The old and ancient worlds managed without the potato, just as they managed without tea, coffee, and tobacco. "Dig For Victory" The potato introduced a new food of first-class value, and unequalled productivity, for potatoes supply more food per acre than any other crop. The effect on social and political economy has been deep and lasting. Since man discovered the use of cereals, there had been no extension of food habits of equal importance. The potato increased man's security against famine. It raired the standard of living for whole nations. It is food for animals as well as man, and a base of manufacturing industries.

It has been one of the sinews of war. In the first World War it was largely Germany's huge production of potatoes that enabled her to fight for four years, despite the blockade, and to-day potatoes are again a basic food munition on both sides. "Dig for victory," means to a great extent, "Dig for potatoes." If there are plenty of potatoes, man won't starve Potatoes and milk will keep him going indefinitely.

I have said the potato decreased the threat of famine. The most tragic chapter in the history of the potato, however, is one of famine. Here the potato made history in a way that affected the whole of the British Commonwealth. The Irish peasant became dependent on the potato. What his staple food was before the potato was common in Ireland I don't know, but by the nineteenth century a large proportion of the people in the west and south lived almost entirely on potatoes. Indeed, in his account of the famine in the 'forties, Justin McCarthy, the Irish historian, says potatoes only. The Irish famine »u A T^ oyal Commission found that the Irish people were the worst fed in Europe. "They live in mud cabins littered upon straw; their food consists of dry potatoes, of which they are often obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal." So wrote Disraeli, in what a Liberal historian describes as a true and just account of the situation. "Sometimes a herring or a little milk may afford them a pleasing variety, but sometimes also they are driven to seaweed and wild herbs. In the 'forties famine descended on the population. A blight, no doubt the same as the one we fight in our gardens to-day, smote the crops, which sometimes perished in a night. Pestilence followed iamine,

P art ®, the Population was decimated The disaster accelerated ft? especially to America. • iA. .^? ere had been more than million people in Ireland; in i population was six and a naif millions; at the end of the century it was four and a half millions. How disastrous were the political consequences of this great migration, comments the historian I have cited, every Englishman and every American knows.

Meagre and unvaried though the diet of the Irish was, we know what the Irish emigrant and the Irish soldier did overseas. Their record is a pretty good testimonial to the potato. The Essential Outside A new chapter in the history of the potato opened with the discovery of vitamins. "Refined" cooking had been gaily turning the oval of the potato into a polygon for the table, thereby robbing it of valuable constituents. "The best part of a potato," says C. H. Middfeton, the 8.8.C. s gardening expert, "is the thick yellowish skin just underneath the thin outer skin, and in ninety cases out of a hundred this is all peeled off and thrown away, and only the starchy inside part is cooked and eaten. I'm not an authority on food values (that's all right, Mr. Middleton, the authorities are with you), but I wouldn't mind betting a new farthing that there is far more goodness in the part of a potato we throw away than in the part we usually eat. One potato cooked and eaten whole probably does you far more good than three or four which have been peeled."

Not Romantic

It must be admitted that the potato is not a romantic object. No one that I know of has written a poem about it. I can recall only one reference in verse—Gilbert's "an affection a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean." I have consulted too large and modern dictionaries of quotations, and my reward is next to nothing. This seems to be the fate of all root foods as opposed to f<?ods grown above ground. Wheat ripens in the sun, and provides one or the loveliest sights in the world. It is a symbol of peaco and plenty, of life itself, and from the earliest times it has appealed to the artist in man. Root crops, hidden in the earth, are felt to be dull. The man-gel-wurzel is a thing of comedy. The turnip, a very useful root, though I wouldn't sigh if I knew I wouldn't ever see one again, signifies stupidity. On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye. That clothe the world and meet the sky . . . Supposing the poet had written:— On either side the river lie Long fields of 'taters and of rye . . . No, don't tell me they didn't have potatoes in King Arthur's time; I know that. Some day justice will e done to the potato. I have felt lyrical myself when I have eaten new potatoes out of my own garden However, it isn't as a table delicacy that the potato deserves to be hymned, but as a robust comrade in the fight for freedom. So plant, brothers, plant all you can, mould carefully, spray if you have to, and don't peel. |