The Sad Story of Potatoes and Fries in America

Is Health Possible Without Home-Made Food?

The Make America Healthy Again (or MAHA) movement recently celebrated some chain restaurants switching from seed oil to tallow in “deep frying” their French fries. Tallow may certainly be more resistant to oxidative degradation and less disruptive to mitochondrial functions than seed oils, but to me, the popularity of French fries is certainly not a sign of a healthy nation, whether fried in seed oil or tallow.

Now if I could recommend only one healthy food item as a “super nutritious low-cost” staple in everyone’s diet, it would be “fresh” potatoes or sweet potatoes (baked or boiled at home). The Irish and South American peasants knew that too. In my earlier article about potatoes “This Low-Cost Crop is a Well-Kept Health Food Secret which Helped Civilizations Grow in Europe and America” I wrote:

There is a well-kept secret in the nutrition and food industry. One of the lowest-cost food items is among the most nourishing and satisfying forms of carbohydrate. In this article, I share some little-known nutritional and historical facts about golden and red potatoes, which are among the healthiest carbohydrates when compared to most types of rice, pasta, bread. Potato’s impressive high fiber content and nutrient density (Vitamins A, B and C, micronutrients, magnesium, phosphate, potassium, iron, copper, and calcium) make it a superfood for our cardiovascular and digestive health as well as immune system. Because of its high fiber and micronutrient density, potato is a perfect food to satiate hunger while regulating blood sugar (although certain people should watch the glycemic index for white potato and certain other varieties, as explained below).

No wonder potatoes were among the earliest domesticated crops in the human history. You can read the potato history and some nutritional tips in that article. Of course, like all other living (unprocessed) foods and vegetables, not all potatoes are created the same and I will soon (in Part III of my blogs about potatoes) share the results of my experiments on the superiority of our chemical-free hand-cultivated potatoes over cheap non-organic commercially-produced sprayed potatoes. But today, in part II of my potato blogs, I want to share with you the alarming trend in the potato consumption in America from a graph I have drawn using USDA potato production data between 1909 and 2022.

As seen, a century ago, each American used an average of around 150 pounds of “fresh” potatoes a year, of the chemical-free type, often stored in dark cool cellars and baked or boiled at home. With the advent of oil-based chemical pesticides and large mechanized farms, fresh chemical-free potatoes were mostly replaced by sprayed potatoes with longer shelf lives, lasting longer in transit or on store shelves (instead of at homes). Then in the early 1950s, the J.R. Simplot Company developed the frozen French fry — a product that was perfectly suited for the expanding fast food industry and to the working (non homemaker) mothers’ need for the quick preparation. As confirmed by USDA’s own research and seen in my graph:

The majority of potatoes in the United States are now sold in processed forms such as frozen, chipped, dehydrated, or canned. With the introduction of French fries as a key side dish in quick-service restaurants, the share of potatoes that go into frozen products has risen in each decade since 1979. As a result, almost half of all potatoes going into food in the United States are now used to create frozen products—most of which are French fries. Meanwhile, the share of potatoes used as fresh table potatoes has declined decade by decade. Even the favorable trend in French fries has seen some bumps along the way. After peaking in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the long-run upward trend in frozen potato availability slowed as many consumers embraced low-carb diets or sought alternative food choices and cuisines. However, by the mid-2010s, frozen potato availability once again turned upward, with per capita availability during the pandemic-influenced 2019–21 period up 8 percent from a decade earlier (2009–11). According to industry data and USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) research in the early 2000s, about 90 percent of frozen French fries move through various food service venues. Quick-service restaurants alone account for about two-thirds of French fry usage.

A 100-gram serving of baked Russet potato with skin has 97 calories and almost no fat (if boiled or baked), while 100 grams of French fries has over 300 calories and 16 grams of fat, even if it is tallow. Another problem with fast food fries, other than the use of seed oils for frying, is their high salt and sugar (dextrose used for browning) content and the use of synthetic preservatives like sodium acid pyrophosphate (linked to¹ kidney disease, coronary artery disease, and hematotoxic and immunotoxic effects with long-term exposure) and and anti-foaming agents like dimethylpolysiloxane (non biodegradable!).

So while the MAHA celebrates fast food chains switching to tallow for frying pre-sliced, frozen potato processed with potentially harmful preservatives, I am mourning the drastic (80%) drop in the consumption of “fresh” chemical-free potatoes and “home-made” foods in American families. It’s hard to find any other healthy starch source that is lower priced, more nutritious, faster/easier to bake and easier to grow in backyards than potatoes! Potatoes are the ideal starch in times of crisis or food shortage. They store well in cool, dark, humid spaces until Mid Winter (February). A family of four can get all their chemical-free potato needs from a 20 feet by 20 feet plot in their own backyard, as fresh as it gets, as cheap as it gets, as nutritious as it gets. I share some tips in my article “Methods Farmers use to Avoid Spraying with Harmful Pesticides.”

I have included some of my tweets about potatoes and sweet potatoes. I am all for low-cost, sustainable approaches to MAHA!

I have discussed potatoes as well as other foods that can help us balance our metabolism in my book The Right Way to Eat:

In Part II of my series about potatoes, I will share with you results of benchmarking our chemical-free hand-cultivated potatoes against sprayed commercial-grade store potatoes. You will be surprised to see the vastly different “bioenergetics” of potatoes that would otherwise look alike, in defending against mold and rotting.

Also related is my blog about Are Dirty/Raw/Ugly Vegetables Better for us? which explains why we store our potatoes with dirt.

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1. https://www.ewg.org/foodscores/ingredients/7393-SodiumPyrophosphates/