Active exploration of potato as a staple food is being advanced
Making potato a staple food is of very important significance for ensuring our country's food security, adjusting the food structure, and improving dietary nutrition. The potato is an excellent crop that combines multiple characteristics of both grain and vegetable, and has the economic and social value of a grain. The potato can provide abundant carbohydrates and dietary fiber, as well as relatively large amounts of minerals and B-group vitamins; it has the dual advantages of both grains and vegetables, and has good food nutritional value. With economic and social development and the improvement of people's living standards, the dietary structure and dietary patterns of our country's residents are also undergoing a historic transformation. Organically combining the promotion of the potato industry's development with the improvement of residents' dietary structure will not only help the industry develop in a healthy, sustainable, and orderly way, but will also be of very important significance for improving residents' nutritional status and ensuring food safety. The National Health and Family Planning Commission pays close attention to, attaches great importance to, and strongly supports research, exchanges, and cooperation in this area.
In terms of food safety, the National Health and Family Planning Commission is mainly responsible for food safety, risk monitoring, risk assessment, formulation of food safety standards, new food raw materials, food additives, and safety review of new varieties of food-related products. The National Health and Family Planning Commission implements the requirements for comprehensively deepening reform, strengthens the transformation of functions, and closely focuses on serving the public's health and dietary safety. With the focus on cleaning up and integrating existing food-related standards, improving the food safety standard system, and strengthening risk monitoring and risk assessment capabilities, it comprehensively performs its duties and strives to consolidate the scientific foundation of food safety. First, improve the construction of the food safety standard system. Second, strengthen food safety risk monitoring. Third, continuously enhance food safety risk assessment capabilities. Fourth, extensively carry out food safety publicity and risk communication work.
The National Health and Family Planning Commission pays close attention to residents' dietary nutrition and promotes the rationalization of dietary structure. Advancing the use of potato as a staple food and pairing it with other foods can achieve a balanced diet and reasonable nutrition; eating more vegetables, fruits, and potato foods conforms to our country's dietary guidance principle of food diversity. The "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents" recommends that the public regularly consume potato foods to obtain their vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber, and prevent cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and various chronic diseases through a reasonable diet and changes in lifestyle. For this reason, advancing the use of potato as a staple food is very meaningful for improving the food structure, nutritional structure, and disease prevention.
Traditional Chinese medicine has done a great deal of research on health preservation, nutrition, and food, and Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" contains many introductions in this regard. Our ancestors once said that "Shennong tasted hundreds of herbs." Through tasting hundreds of herbs, he tasted four kinds of things: first, he tasted what could serve as grain; second, he tasted what could be planted as vegetables; third, he tasted things that could be used as both medicine and food; fourth, he tasted what kind of food could cure diseases.
Food safety and dietary nutrition are related to the people's physical health and are a major issue concerning people's livelihood. The National Health and Family Planning Commission will use scientific thinking and the rule of law to continuously improve all aspects of food safety work, and will continue to pay close attention to, attach importance to, and strongly support the Ministry of Agriculture's "transform the model, adjust the structure, promote development," and advance the exploration and promotion of making potato a staple food.