Do you think potato as a vegetable or as a carbohydrate? / myLot

September 23, 2009 2:50pm CST

Before I moved to the UK I did not like potato. I can live without it. However I found here in the UK people eat potato a lot. Potato is like bread in British meals. How about you? Do you like potato or not? Do you think potato as a vegetable or as a carbohydrate? Thank you for sharing your ideas.

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23 responses

Just an Ordinary Owl?

@owlwings (43910)

• Cambridge, England

23 Sep 09

Potatoes are a vegetable, of course, and they do contain carbohydrate, mostly in the form of starch but with some sugars. They are also a source of fibre, minerals and vitamin C and, to a lesser extent, other vitamins. There is very little if any protein in a potato. Most of the vitamins are contained in the layer directly beneath the skin, so peeling raw potatoes before cooking them (very often the traditional way) removes most of the vitamin content! Provided they are served boiled or roast, potatoes are acceptable in a diabetic diet because the starch grains are largely unbroken and therefore the carbohydrate is slower to be absorbed. Mashing, however, breaks the starch grains and radically changes the way that they are processed by the body. Diabetics should avoid mashed potato. There are many different varieties of potato with different textures, flavours and suitability for certain ways of cooking. Some, like Maris Piper, are ideal for chipping, roasting and mashing, others, like King Edwards, are better boiled (they tend to be less 'floury' and more 'soapy' - in texture NOT in flavour!) Various varieties of potato (Firapple and Charlotte) are best harvested when they are small with thin skins. They have a very delicate flavour and should be served boiled and served either hot (as 'new potatoes') or cold as salad potatoes. Usually such potatoes are served with the skin on. Provided a potato is young and has no green whatsoever on the skin it is theoretically possible to safely eat it raw. Potatoes are members of the Solanum family, however, and usually the green parts of most of this family are poisonous to a greater or lesser extent. Exceptions are the potato (so long as no part of it is green - the potato itself is actually an underground swollen stem), the fruit of the tomato, aubergine [eggpalnt] (again, the fruit of the plant) and bell and chilli peppers. I think of potato as a vegetable, though, for dietary purposes it needs to be treated with the grains as a source of carbohydrate. Even mashed, however, the carbohydrate is as a starch which is not so quickly assimilable as the sugars and it is in a different class from the starches of rice, wheat, corn and other grains as well as the pulses (peas, beans, lentils &c). The typical British diet relies almost completely on meat and cheese for its protein. Wheat flour also contains protein, of course. Fat (from the meat and in butter) and carbohydrate from wheat and root vegetables, including (since the 17th Century) potatoes, supply energy and wheat, potatoes, green vegetables and whole fruits supply vitamins and fibre. The Chinese traditional diet is probably just as well balanced but tends to include more protein, carbohydrate and fibre from rice and other vegetables, less protein from cheese and milk products and, on the whole, less meat than would be found in most modern British diets. In early centuries in Britain, meat was expensive (unless it was home-grown or 'wild') and not used by most people as much as it is today. By contrast, the richer people ate much more meat than we do today. A mediaeval feat might consist of many dishes of different fishes and meats almost exclusively!

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Just an Ordinary Owl?

@owlwings (43910)

• Cambridge, England

29 Sep 09

Thanks for your 'BR', sblossom. When I think about it, a Chinese 'banquet' (as served in good Chinese restaurants in England) may contain 12 or more dishes, most of which actually contain quite a lot of meat. I think that, in China, much more emphasis is put on flavour (and balance) than it is in English cooking. What is called 'British Traditional Cooking' really describes what the workers eat, not what the 'gentry' have traditionally eaten, which very often includes dishes from other cultures and invariably contains more meat. I'm sure that just the same division happens in China: there are common, 'traditional' dishes which use a different combination of sauces and flavourings simply because they are quick to prepare (when everyone in the household is working) or they can be prepared and be reheated later or eaten cold. In England we don't have the culture of 'quick cooking' (that is, food prepared so that it will cook in minutes in a wok or something similar). This is something that we have learned (or are learning) to our benefit from the interchange of culture. What have we given China in exchange? Nothing, so far as I can see, except the burger in a bun and Coca Cola! ... YUK! The potato, however, is an interesting vegetable (yes, of course, it's a vegetable!). It has long been used in Indian and European dishes ... so much so that it's now a staple in Europe and an essential in many Indian recipes (anything with 'aloo' in the name is almost certain to contain potato). In Thailand and further East, I think that the potato is regarded as an 'exotic' (and not a very interesting one, at that). Perhaps it is used in the Philippines more than it is elsewhere East of India but only because the Philippines have a much closer association with Western culture than much of the Far East. It's worth remembering that the potato (and the tomato) only arrived in Europe in the 16th Century (1536, in the case of the potato) but proved itself so easy to grow and so able to cheaply replace the other starches in our diet that it has almost taken over our menus! In China you do, of course, have your root vegetables, as we do here: the earliest and most traditional of ours are parnips, carrots and maybe beetroot. In China one finds more 'stem' vegetables (perhaps) used in cookery than the parts of the plant that grow underground as roots (technically, the potato is a swollen stem rather than a root, as carrot, parsnip, beetroot and mooli are). This, I think, is one of the main differences in our cookery cultures. In many parts of the world there was (and still is) a resistance to 'root' vegetables because (since they grow underground) they 'belong to the devil'! My feeling about Chinese [cookery] culture is that it is more resistant to 'new' ingredients than, for example, Indian or more 'Western' cookery. This may be because China was tradtionally at the end of the overland trade route and that people along the route were more exposed to (and needed to cater for) the tastes of other cultures. This was, of course, long before potatoes arrived from the New World but it's noticeable that Chinese recipes tend to have been influenced less by ingredients and techniques from the West than other recipes from along the Silk Road have been influenced by the cultures that travelled it.

Just an Ordinary Owl?

@owlwings (43910)

• Cambridge, England

29 Sep 09

I meant to add, by the way, that China is actually the world's largest grower of potatoes - whether the Chinese eat them much or not! Presumably, they are a big export crop :)