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Potatoes Are Pillars of Worldwide Nutrition

Potatoes are so tied into human life and nutrition that one of the first toys to be advertised on TV and still popular after 50 years is Mr. Potato Head.” With its “”eyes”” and round body shape the potato has been used to imitate the human form. But all fun aside the potato has improved human health and nutrition influenced wars patterns of human migration and the economy of many nations for hundreds of years. The potato is indigenous to various parts of South America; plants in a wild state have been found on the Peruvian coast as well as on the mountainous lands of Central Chile and Argentina. The Spaniards are believed to have first brought potatoes from Quito Ecuador to Europe in the early part of the sixteenth century. European immigrants introduced potatoes to North America throughout the 1600s but they were not widely grown until 1719 in America.

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According to the USDA potatoes are the most important vegetable in the United States. Over the past several decades frozen potato consumption rose and fresh potato consumption declined. African-Americans eat more potato chips and French fries per capita than do other Americans. Seniors favor fresh and canned potatoes while teenagers eat more chips and French fries than do other age groups.

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The Much Maligned Potato

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A recent Time magazine article put potatoes on the level of bacon grease as far as your heart and health are concerned.1 “”””According to Meir Stampfer a nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health the problem is potato starch. When you eat a potato and that starch hits the saliva in your mouth its tightly bundled molecules immediately get turned into sugars which make a beeline for the blood. ‘You ate a potato