What impact will the potato-as-staple-food strategy bring us
Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture stated that China will launch a potato-as-staple-food strategy, promoting the processing of potatoes into steamed buns, noodles, rice noodles and other staple foods. In the future, potatoes will become the fourth major staple crop after rice, wheat and corn. This news has attracted widespread attention. What significance and impact does making potatoes a staple food have for us?
Traditionally, China has treated potatoes as a vegetable. However, in terms of nutritional composition, potatoes are closer to rice and wheat, and quite different from other vegetables. From a production perspective, rice, wheat and corn, as staple foods, have high yields and are easy to store, giving them unique advantages as food. Nutritionally, they can all efficiently provide carbohydrates. Refined rice and white flour in particular are convenient to process and easy to digest, and have made enormous contributions to solving the problem of "eating one's fill."
Social development has meant that people are no longer satisfied with merely "eating their fill"; healthier, safer and tastier food has become our pursuit. Many grains - corn, for example - are eaten less and less, and are used more as feed to be converted into meat, eggs and milk. This conversion satisfies people's higher aspirations, but the price paid is a reduction in the efficiency of grain use, so the demand for grain increases. In addition, population growth also requires more grain. "Food security" - that is, how to ensure people have an adequate food supply - has become a global issue.
Potatoes are also a high-yielding crop with wide adaptability. The nutrients provided by rice, wheat and corn can all be provided by potatoes, and are even superior. For example, many people's diets today are too high in calories and lacking in dietary fiber, while a portion of potato starch is resistant starch, which is difficult to digest and absorb, making it healthier than refined rice and white flour. In addition, the solid content of these foods contains about 10% protein; although the content is not considered high, the amount eaten as a staple food is large, so it is also considerable. The protein in rice and wheat differs greatly from human requirements in amino acid composition, whereas the amino acid composition of potato protein is much better and can serve as a source of "high-quality protein." In addition, potatoes contain a considerable amount of vitamin C, potassium and several B vitamins.
In recent years, cadmium and arsenic contamination in rice has attracted widespread attention. On the one hand this is due to environmental pollution factors, and on the other hand it is also related to the plant characteristics of rice itself. Although controlling pollution and strengthening testing and supervision are the main ways to solve this, for individuals, increasing food diversity and reducing dependence on a single food is a choice they can make more proactively. Replacing part of rice and flour with potatoes can also reduce the risk of eating foods with excessive contaminants.
Of course, whether it is a national strategy or a nutritional advantage, it is only of theoretical significance. Whether to make potatoes a staple food still depends on personal choice - the state making it a staple food does not require everyone to eat it; and not making it a staple food cannot stop people from eating it every day. So-called "making it a staple food" - formulating a "strategy" is not difficult; what kind of "tactics" will be used to get people to increase their consumption is the key to success or failure.
"Promoting the processing of potatoes into steamed buns, noodles, rice noodles and other staple foods" - this "tactic" is certainly a direction worth striving for. However, the core of a "staple food" should be an increase in everyone's consumption, and it does not necessarily have to be through everyday "staple foods." Making potatoes into steamed buns, noodles or rice noodles may perhaps be achieved through certain technical efforts, but they will inevitably still be different from ordinary steamed buns, noodles and rice noodles, and whether people can accept them is also unknown. Relatively speaking, actively promoting the deep processing of potatoes may be somewhat easier. Social development has made the daily consumption of processed foods greater and greater, and through deep processing, breaking potatoes down into starch and protein and, after appropriate improvement, making them applicable to various processed foods, is also a direction that should not be underestimated.