Hummusgirl's Blog

Baked potatoes are pretty healthy, but when you have french fries and potato chips taking over the country (and maybe the planet for all I know), than we really should try to salvage some nutrition from them.   I have been loving sweet potatoes, which I read have more nutrients than regular white potatoes.  However, when I wikipediaed it, I found that they’re both pretty similar, with the only major difference being that sweet potatoes (30 mg) have more than twice the amount of calcium than regular potatoes (12 mg).

Did you know that the man who “invented” the Russet Burbank potato (that would be Luther Burbank) got famous because of it back in the 1870s.  He got really lucky because he found an abnormal potato with a seed pod and cultivated that into the Russet potato we know and love today.  Russett potatoes are the main potato used today, most of that which goes into fries and potato chips.

Another factoid is that more potatoes are grown in China, Russia, and India than the United States.

I was reading this book called, “An Edible History of Humanity,” and it was talking about the corn laws in England from the mid 1800s.  The so-called “Corn Laws,” referred to the mercantile system of England when corn producers didn’t want to have to compete with corn producers from other areas of the world.  It was repealed in 1850 in part due to the great famine in Ireland.  It’s kind of funny how I’ve never heard of corn laws in the US and we produce double the amount of corn than the second highest producer (China).

There are, however, soybean and potato laws in the US.  A controversial potato law from 1929 that was deemed unconstitutional and monsanto has specific laws regarding seeds with soybeans.  But maybe corn is so controlled by the government that we don’t know what goes on on those fields and factories.  Maybe they don’t want you to know, but just keep preaching that corn is wholesome (I believe this actually).  I mean, its been around for thousands of years so maybe it can’t really be anymore messed up!