The Potato Avenged!

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 11, 14 January 1936, Page 11

The Potato Avenged!

DIETITIANS DEPEND IT HUMBLE TUBER IN NEW ROLE The humble potato, that unobtrusive and almost despised but nevertheless essential vegetable, is coming into fashion again, says a Sydney correspondent. The slimming craze seemed to sound the tuber’s death-knell, but dietitians now declare that far from being a builder of adipose tissue the potato should appear—cooked in its skin—on the menu of any woman who wants to keep not only her figuro but her health.

The potato, like the tomato, is something of a mystery. Is it a fruit, a vegetable, or a flower? History says it is all three. The ill-fated Marie Antoinette wore its blossoms in her hair, and man}' of the court beauties of eigh-teenth-century Europe used its waxenwhite flowers in their posies. It was for long the staple diet of the Irish race, and tho failure of its crop wrote one of the most tragic pages in tho story of tho Emorald Isle. Potatoes are still in favour in Ireland, and the ‘‘murphies.” are tradionally dear to the hoarts of her twenty million exiles. They have caused riot and religious feud in many countries. Scots parsons denounced the potato becauso it does not appear in Holy Writ, and yet, contradictorily enough, they claimed it was the “forbidden fruit” in the Garden of Eden. Frederick tho Great of Germany threatened with multilation all his subjects who would not sow it, and himself planted it in the gardens before his Berlin palace. The first famous European potato breeder Was Antoine Parmentier, who used to give fashionable dinner parties in Paris at which every dish was made from potatoes in some form or other. Benjamin Eranklin was a frequent guest at these potato parties. One of the s-weets was what now considered a Portuguese concoction—flaked potato beaten up with white of egg and whipped cream. Now tho potato has definitely come into its own again. Iu all diet sheets either for slimming or building up it is one of the essential foods.

, 'For beauty treatments its juice is used in anti-wrinkle packs and its cooked pulp, mixed with stiffy-beaten white of egg, is often applied to face, neck, and arms, if, for any reason, the air has to be kept from the skin. Doctors aro loud in its praises, and beauty specialists extol its virtues.