I had the distinct pleasure of visiting the International Potato Center today and learned a good deal more about potatoes than I had expected. Despite the rather negative rhetoric surrounding potatoes that is currently heard in the U.S. (e.g., the information conveyed by the Atkins Diet dissuading a dieter from eating baked potatoes) it turns out that the enormous variety of potatoes offers nutritional benefits for populations existing in different climates all over the world. Now, of course, a short visit to the International Potato Center wasn’t enough to learn “all about potatoes” but it did teach me the following:
- Despite a lifetime of eating potatoes I am woefully ignorant of the value and variety of tubers in existence today
- It is amazing to see a gene bank that contains up to 5,000 different cultivars of potatoes
- Potatoes offer more food value, per hectare, than wheat
During my visit, one discussion mentioned a letter to the editor of a Canadian newspaper that mockingly highlighted the United Nations’ decision to make 2008 the International Year of the Potato. After perusing this somewhat useless diatribe I can only conclude that the author seems to think that drawing the attention of the world to potatoes as a source of potential food security is, well, a worthless pursuit. It seems to me that potatoes can offer a wide array of value to the developing nations of the planet. And, to refute an argument made in the letter, the welfare and nutrition of the world’s population does carry a similar importance as the discussion of women in society (referring to the International Women’s Year – 1975).
Overall, the visit was both surprising and pleasantly enlightening. Perhaps because of the availability of potatoes some might think they offer no unrealized value. Today I saw just the opposite – maybe it is some of the most commonly found and used elements of our world that offer a real variety of future uses.