“O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God!”
Psalm 36:67
Shortly after Columbus discovered America, explorers in Peru, South America, came across an important food they had never seen before. They were pleasantly surprised to find that these round or oval, hard tubers were good to eat after being boiled, baked or fried. The explorers took some home to the British Isles. They grew well there and had such good food value that they soon became a chief food.
What was it they had discovered? Potatoes! Soon so many potatoes were raised in Ireland that they got the name Irish potatoes. However, they should have been called Peruvian potatoes, since that is where they were first found. Even now, it is one of the world’s most valued and most widely grown vegetables, and new varieties are being developed.
Being a main food for so many of us, let’s look at the food value of a potato. It is about eighty per cent water and twenty per cent solid matter. Starch makes up about eighty-five percent of the potato’s solid matter, and protein makes up about ten per cent. It also contains important vitamins as well as the elements calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and sodium. And there’s good news for people who count calories: A medium-size potato contains only about seventy calories. But that number quickly rises if butter is added or eaten as potato chips or French-fried potatoes.
Potatoes are a close relative of tomatoes, red peppers and eggplants. However, they are not related to sweet potatoes or yams. Potatoes must be replanted each year since the plants die when the tubers mature or when frost kills the plant. The tubers develop on the underground parts of the plant and range in size from that of a pea to more than six inches long. Usually two to three potatoes develop per plant, but some varieties may grow ten to twenty per plant.
Potatoes are grown in every state of the continental United States, but most are grown on large farms in northern states where growing conditions are best. Russia actually grows more potatoes than any other country. Other leading growers are China, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Great Britain, France and Spain.
When the Lord God provided necessities for all His creatures, it was throughout the entire world. On the third day of creation He declared, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb [plants] yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth” (Genesis 1:11).
The more we learn of the great varieties of that wonderful provision in so many parts of the world, the more we should thank Him for His wisdom and loving care over all His creation and particularly for the way this benefits each one of us.
ML-11/09/2003