Photo courtesy Łukasz Rawa on Unsplash.
The questions facing humankind as we complete the first quarter of the 21st century are numerous, and some are momentous.
Like: “Is a potato a vegetable?”
A question no one would have even thought to ask, back in the 20th century, when people ignorantly assumed that an edible root harvested from the soil, generated by a plant sporting green leaves, was a vegetable.
Admittedly, potatoes did have ‘eyes’ which needed to be dug out prior to cooking. But no one would have confused a potato for an ‘animal’ just because it had eyes.
How little we understood the reality of nutritional politics, back then.
Apparently, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee now foolishly believes they can adjust the nature of reality in our favor.
Americans eat a lot of vegetables. One of the vegetables we eat the most of, is the tomato. We consumed, on average, 31 pounds of tomatoes during 2019, mostly in the form of pizza sauce. But the tomato lost its standing as a vegetable long ago, when it was re-classified as a ‘fruit’. The change did not diminish our love for pizza, but merely made us feel a little more guilty.
The re-classification of the tomato left the potato at the top of the heap, in terms of America’s most popular vegetables, with each of us noshing, on average, 50 pounds of the delightful and versatile tuber during 2019.
The problem facing the USDA is nearly insurmountable. In an effort to improve the nation’s overall health, they’ve been telling us to eat more vegetables — by which they meant, foul-tasting vegetables like broccoli and kale.
We knew very well what they meant, but like spoiled children, we answered the call by eating more potatoes. Which are, and always have been, vegetables.
“No, no, no!” the USDA exclaimed. “We didn’t want you to eat more potatoes! That’s the wrong vegetable!”
But we just smiled and opened another bag of chips.
In their frustration, the USDA decided to try the nuclear option. They announced their intention of re-classifying potatoes as a ‘grain’, in the 2025 version of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines.
Currently, the USDA thinks there are five kinds of food.
- Vegetables.
- Grains.
- Fruit.
- Dairy.
- Protein.
Since potatoes are obviously not a dairy product, and have hardly any protein to speak of, and since they had already banished the tomato into the fruits column, the best option for moving the potato out of the vegetables group was to declare that a potato is a grain.
This proposal did not sit well, however, with the National Potato Council. Kam Quarles, representing the NPC, testified during a hearing of USDA’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and politely but firmly asked them to leave potatoes where they are: in the vegetables column.
Quote:
While NPC is sensitive to individual needs and cultures, we urge the Committee to recognize a potato is not a grain… Starchy vegetables and grains are two vastly different food groups that play distinctly different roles in contributing nutrients to the diet… Research shows that diets high in vegetable consumption, including potatoes, promote healthy outcomes overall…
The suggestion to reclassify potatoes as a non-vegetable is not grounded in any scientific metric. This unsupported notion, if acted upon, will confuse consumers, could result in nutrient gaps and also decreased vegetable consumption. We ask the Committee to avoid this chaotic outcome and continue to acknowledge the fact that potatoes are a vegetable.
Like Mr. Quarles, I can see the obvious outcome of classifying a potato as a grain. We will simply stop eating ‘vegetables’, and eat more ‘grains’. Our overall consumption of potatoes will remain unchanged.
A separate industry coalition representing the grain industry — the Grain Chain — can see the same thing happening. Americans will think they are getting their recommended servings of ‘grains’ in the form of French fries, and and it’s all downhill for bread and cereal manufacturing.
You can fool some of the people all of the time… and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t make us stop eating potatoes.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.