How did the potato take the path to becoming a staple food? It was already introduced to China 400 years ago
In early 2015, the potato, known scientifically as “Solanum tuberosum,” suddenly became a hot topic. At a seminar titled “Strategy for Developing Potatoes as a Staple Food,” officials from the Ministry of Agriculture said that in the coming years, China would launch a strategy to make potatoes a staple food, and the potato would become another staple food after rice, wheat, and corn.
The potato, originally ranked among vegetables, was finally going to make a comeback and become a staple food held in people's hands. Some netizens joked that “this kind of change is hard to accept for a while.” Whether in official or public circles, all kinds of discussions arose one after another and never stopped, and the potato's “past and present life” was popularized by various media again and again.
So why can the potato become a staple food? How will it change our dining tables and our eating habits? Recently, reporters conducted interviews with these questions to explore and reveal the potato's path to becoming a staple food.
⟦NL> The potato was already introduced to China 400 years ago, and now it may set off a third staple food revolution
What is a staple food? Dai Xiaofeng, director of the Institute of Food Science and Technology at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, described it as “what you hold in your bowl and in your hands when eating an ordinary meal.” He further explained to reporters: “For a crop to become a staple food, it must meet three conditions: first, it can be produced on a large scale over a relatively large area; second, it can be stored in large quantities for a long time; third, most people can accept it, it occupies a major proportion of three meals a day, and it can provide most of the energy and nutrition the eater needs. At present, the main crops that can serve as staple foods are what are usually called the five grains and miscellaneous grains, including tubers.”
As Dai Xiaofeng said, in the dietary habits of people in our country, the five grains and miscellaneous grains all count as staple foods, and the currently recognized “leading” staple foods are rice, wheat, and corn. Among them, rice, native to Asia, is undoubtedly the “overlord” among staple foods. According to historical records, China began sowing rice as early as the Shennong era in the 27th century BC, and by about 4,200 years ago, rice cultivation had already advanced from the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to the middle reaches of the Yellow River. Today, rice will still continue to occupy the dominant position among staple foods.
After rice, wheat and corn also successively became staple foods for Chinese people. But unlike rice, the latter two are both “imported goods.” Wheat originated along the Mediterranean coast and entered China around the Shang Dynasty along Central Asia, Xinjiang, and the Hexi Corridor. Its arrival triggered the first revolution in the history of staple food development in our country. Flour-based foods officially began to appear in the Chinese diet, and the staple food pattern of “rice in the south and wheat in the north” was formed. By the 16th century, corn, native to South America, also began to enter regions such as Guangxi in China, thus setting off the second staple food revolution. With the passage of time, corn became another staple food on ordinary people's dining tables.
However, as a foreign crop as well, the potato, which came to China from Europe more than 400 years ago, was not so lucky. Although other parts of the world had already eaten it as a staple food for thousands of years, in our country, because ordinary people could not process it into steamed buns or noodles, its path to becoming a staple food was somewhat slow. “On the one hand, influenced by our country's traditional dietary consumption habits, potatoes are mostly used as vegetables, and people do not understand its nutritional value well enough. On the other hand, because potato processing technology has been difficult to break through, potato flour cannot be made into staple foods such as noodles and steamed buns using traditional techniques, which also directly affects its becoming a staple food.” Dai Xiaofeng changed tone, “However, once the potato achieves staple food status, it is bound to set off the third staple food revolution in our country's history.”
As long as the technical problems that troubled our ancestors are solved, the potato's path to becoming a staple food will become faster
In fact, in the process of becoming a staple food, compared with wheat, corn, and rice, the small potato still has great advantages. Although fresh potatoes have high water content and are not resistant to storage or convenient to transport, if they are processed into whole flour and turned into dry matter for storage, potatoes are much more storage-resistant than flour and rice.
People cannot help but ask: when the potato changes from a vegetable into a meal, in what form will it appear? When will ordinary people be able to eat these products?
During the interview, Dai Xiaofeng told reporters a story. “A friend's wife loved eating potatoes. Once, she tried to use potato flour to make noodles, but found that the particles of potato whole flour were too broken and simply could not be kneaded into dough. It was even more impossible to let the dough rise and rest. So this friend came to ask whether there was a possibility of making potato flour easier to knead into dough and make into noodles that everyone could eat. In fact, we have always been seeking a technical path to solve this problem. The problem encountered by this friend's wife is exactly the problem that ordinary people care about, and it is also precisely a processing technology problem that has always troubled our ancestors.”
As the national team in agricultural scientific research, the Institute of Food Science and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has long been conducting research related to making potatoes a staple food, especially making tremendous efforts in the design and improvement of potato processing techniques. Therefore, experts proposed using accumulated technical achievements to trial-produce potato noodles with a potato whole flour content of 20%. After the 2014 Spring Festival, the first generation of products containing 20% potato flour was successfully produced. The experts were all excited and affirmed the technical feasibility of making potatoes a staple food. Along with the success of the experiment, in March 2014, the National Potato Staple Food Research Project was formally established. In August 2014, the first generation of potato staple food products containing 40% potato flour was also successfully tested. Starting in August 2014, the Institute of Food Science and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences sent the products successfully trial-produced by experts to the Ministry of Agriculture's agency cafeteria, making them the first tasters of potato staple food products.
“Potatoes do not contain gluten protein. When making staple food products such as steamed buns and noodles, there are problems such as difficulty in forming, difficulty in proofing, high hardness, and noodles being easy to break and not tolerant to boiling. Solving them is really not easy.” Zhang Hong, a researcher at the Institute of Food Science and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences who has long been engaged in research on traditional food processing and equipment, said to reporters with emotion, “As long as the processing problems are solved, the potato's path to becoming a staple food will be much easier.”