Is a white potoato a vegetable?

Perhaps spurred by potential squabbles over school lunch nurtitional guidelines, TPP has been asked this simple question. The simple answer is, yes, the white potato is a

vegetable, which by definition is an edible root, stem, or leaf. The white potato (although they also come in pink, yellow, and blue skins & flesh) is a tuber, a modified stem. However this vegetable is in a special category that we call starchy staples. These are basically vegetables that supply a significant amount of dietary calories. So the white potato is heavy on calories (although low fat). When thinking in terms of balanced diets, the white potato is more like rice and bread than like kale or carrot. Tater tots are not even remotely like eating carrot sticks.

Economic Botany vs. Midwestern Students

Tomorrow the contest begins. The Phactor vs. a certain midwestern complacency and parochialism that most students do not even know they have. Suffice it to say there was more ethnic and language diversity it my freshmen dorm in New York than there is among my students here in Lincolnland. The idea is simple really: start thinking globally. What's true for you is not universal. The good news is that a very effective means of bringing this home is via the topic of food. None of my students will ever put rice in their list of most important food plants; what a complete difference when the same exercise was done in Thailand. Also funny is when my students are unable to actually think of 10 food plants after you explain that Sugar-coated Chocolate Bombs are not a food plant. One of the things they are assigned, and you may find it interesting too is a photo essay entitled What the world eats. The photos are great, but study the groceries. You can learn a great deal: who of this group seems to have the best diet, the most diverse diet, the most monotonous dies, who eats the most fresh food, who eats the most packaged/processed food, who eats the most junk. Then the students have to compare this to their own diet. Parents may shudder at the thought of what their 20 somethings would eat when left to their own devices; it's sometimes as bad as you may think. How many of them do you think actually cook? Hint: don't hold up too many fingers. Your insights, comments, and feedback will be appreciated.

Turmeric: the spice of life

Herbs and spices have long been considered essential in many cuisines adding interest and flavor to otherwise bland and boring food. Cereal grain endosperm and starchy staples such as potato and cassava make up the overwhelming majority of human calories, but they come up short in terms of taste.

My modestly-hot, award-winning chili almost killed one of my colleagues of Scandinavian descent. An obvious observation is that spicier cuisines are found closer to the Equator. But why is this so? Are people from tropical cultures used to spiciness because most spices are from tropical plants?

In study after study, spices are found to have medicinal benefits. The most commonly used spices of the lower latitudes consistently have the highest antimicrobial activity. So in hot climates, especially before the widespread use of refrigeration, cultures that used the most spices ate the safest food. People who liked spicy food were healthiest. So the whole thing makes biological sense. Where spices were rare and expensive, and where food was not such a health risk, people learned to like bland.

A chemical in turmeric (yellow powder, upper left) seems beneficial in helping the immune system deal with Alzheimer’s disease.

And now another chemical in turmeric, a member of the ginger family, relieves bowel inflammation and may be useful in treating Crohn’s disease. I post this to curry favor with my F1.

The essential oils largely responsible for spices’ flavors have long been known to have medicinal qualities, although determining the precise compound, and then safe and effective doses, requires scientific study, something oft overlooked by herbal fanatics. Understand, these are toxic compounds (used in the broad sense of that term) but the amounts in spices when used in food level doses are harmless. No question about it, you can OD on nutmeg, but consumption of spices can be considered part of a healthy lifestyle. And who wants bland anyways? Oh, yes, my Scandinavian colleague.