Potatoes as a Staple Food: An Emerging Trend - How the Humble Potato Conquered the World

The potato, scientifically known as Solanum tuberosum, is the world's fourth-largest food crop. According to statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the world's total potato output in 2013 was 376 million tons. With the establishment in recent years of China's strategy to make potatoes a staple food, China's potato planting area reached 5.57 million hectares in 2014, with fresh potato output of more than 95 million tons; both the area and the output account for about one quarter of the world's total, and China has become the world's largest producer and consumer of potatoes.

The potato has many names in China: in Guangdong it is called “shu zai”, in Shanxi “shan yao dan”, in Fujian “he lan shu”…… while Beijingers call it “tu dou”, a name that makes people almost forget that the potato is not native to this land but an “outsider” that crossed the ocean.

The potato's place of origin is the distant Andes mountain region of South America. When the first European explorers reached Peru, they found the locals cultivating an underground fruit called “papa”, which “becomes soft after cooking and tastes like roasted chestnuts, wrapped in a layer of not-too-thick skin”. This was the potato. Later, the potato was brought back to Europe by greedy colonizers as spoils of war. For nearly a century afterward, the potato's use was limited to garden cultivation.

The Irish made a great contribution to the potato's widespread acceptance in Europe. The land of the island of Ireland is poor and grain and wheat do not grow well there, so the potato quickly spread. By the end of the 18th century, the potato had become a major crop in European countries. Modern science has proven that, besides carbohydrates, the potato can also provide a considerable amount of protein and vitamins, and the potato is also relatively simple to prepare.

In China, the Ming dynasty work “Complete Treatise on Agriculture” by Xu Guangqi records: “Earth yam, also called tu dou, also called huang du, with trailing stems and leaves like beans, roots round like chicken eggs, white inside and yellow skin…… can be boiled and eaten, and can also be steamed and eaten.” Based on this, the potato has been cultivated in China for more than 400 years. Since ancient times China has taken rice and wheat as its staple foods, and the potato is usually used as a side dish, so its main production areas are relatively small, concentrated mainly in the mountainous areas of the southwest, the northwest, Inner Mongolia and the northeast.

Today in developed countries in Europe and America, the potato has long been eaten as a staple food and plays an important role in people's diets. In China, potatoes are mostly consumed fresh, and processing and utilization lag behind developed countries; key processing technologies and equipment are mostly derived from the introduction and modification of related foreign technologies and equipment.

In 2014, the Chinese government issued the “Outline of China's Food and Nutrition Development (2014-2020)”, widely publicizing the nutritional value of the potato. The potato's medicinal value is reflected in two aspects: first, its own medicinal value. The ancient medical classic “Compendium of Materia Medica” records that the potato has the effects of “replenishing deficiency and fatigue, boosting energy, strengthening the spleen and stomach, and reinforcing kidney yin”, helping people to “live long with few illnesses”. Second, the role of its own physical properties in medicine. Potato starch can be used to make sugar coatings, capsules, etc., as well as dental materials, medical glove lubricants and more, and can also serve as a raw material for medicines such as vitamins and glucose. Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Xinrong believes that the conditions are already in place and the time is ripe to advance the development of potato staple food products and the industry, to process potatoes into staple food products such as steamed buns, noodles and rice noodles that suit Chinese consumption habits, to scientifically guide potato staple food consumption, and to gradually make the potato one of the choices for residents' three meals a day.

“The forms of China's processed potato products are mainly starch, whole flour, fried potato chips and French fries, etc.; the product types are single and the nutritional value is low, and there is a lack of potato staple food products suited to Chinese residents' dietary habits. Because the potato is rich in nutrients needed by the human body, adding a certain proportion of potato to traditional staple foods to process new types of potato staple food products is expected to enhance the nutritional value of traditional staple foods and will largely meet people's need for nutritious staple foods.” Dai Xiaofeng, director of the Institute of Agro-Products Processing of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the “Economic Daily” reporter, “Through comparative testing and analysis of the nutritional content of potato staple foods and the content of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals and dietary fiber, we found that the nutritional value of staple food products such as potato steamed buns and noodles is higher than that of traditional staple food products such as wheat steamed buns and noodles.”

⟦NL> The reporter learned that China's potato staple food research and development team has carried out trial production of staple food products such as potato spaghetti and spicy soup, completed research on the effect of whole flour addition on the rheological properties of potato dough, preliminarily determined a trial plan for evaluating the nutritional efficacy of steamed buns containing 40% potato whole flour, successfully produced instant potato rice noodles with a 55% proportion, and applied for 20 related patents. In the research and development of specialized equipment, it has preliminarily completed the equipment selection and functional modification plan for potato noodles, manufactured a prototype integrated bionic dough rolling machine and begun market promotion.

Wang Xiaohu of the Institute of Food and Nutrition Development of the Ministry of Agriculture analyzes that China's future potato staple food processing potential mainly consists of two major parts. First, the processing potential of existing potato staple food raw materials or semi-finished products: at present, China's production capacity for potato starch, whole flour (including cooked flour and raw flour), potato chips and frozen French fries has reached about 500,000 tons, 150,000 tons, 300,000 tons and 170,000 tons per year respectively, already possessing a certain processing foundation. With the advancement of potato staple food industrialization, calculated from the consumer demand for staple food products, it is expected that China's annual production capacity of potato whole flour can reach more than 10 million tons. Second, the processing potential of staple food products: the annual processing capacity of potato staple food products compounded with wheat flour or with rice and rice flour is expected to reach about 20 million tons; the annual processing capacity of regionally distinctive and leisure-function products is expected to reach about 8 million tons.