There are potatoes left. I don't mean at my house but the potato farmers are stuck with it because of the pandemic. I could say the lockdown but that's a fairy tale. Shops with us in and in most parts of Europe haven't been without food for one single day. While we were stuck at home the truck drivers kept driving and guess what? They had the roads for themselves, the same amount of car accidents happened, they no longer need to take a break after a certain amount of driving hours and it suddenly is no problem if their driver's license and other papers are overrated and the truck hasn't had it'check-up at the service.
Still, those farmers drown in a mountain of potatoes, and believe me it is a smelly business. I am sure the government is fine with it. After they promoted and spend high amounts of money in developing agriculture they want to get rid of those farmers. It's a good thing we announced the pandemic they must have thought.
The Netherlands is one of the biggest exporters of potatoes and potato products like French fries. According to the "latest news", people stopped eating French fries because of the lockdown. Hard to believe. No fast food restaurant is closed or bankrupt, neither are those snack bars in our village and if it comes to French fries... just like potato chips it's food for the poor. A bag of 1 kilo only costs 1.25 euro and you can feed your family with it. For breakfast or dessert, you serve soda with potato chips. No need to peel potatoes yourself, a bag of frozen potatoes is way cheaper than buying potatoes and many Dutch families have a fryer.
Are potatoes healthy?
It depends on what you see as the harming factor. Potatoes (just like rice and pasta) make fat for sure. Carbohydrates means sugar and sugar means gaining weight and diabetics.
An interesting thing is you can change carbohydrates in potatoes (and rice) into something which is good for the intestines (colon) and even might fight infections (and cancer). If you let your cooked potatoes (and rice) cool off and save it for 1-2 days (in the fridge if your house isn't cool enough) and bake it in a pan (everything needs to be equally heated, which means the microwave can't do the job for you, the carbohydrates are changed into fibers. How cool is that? You can eat what you like without getting fat if you make leftovers out of your potatoes (and rice).
How about you pasta fans? Only one test is done to figure it out and this one suggested the same for pasta but like we all know one test is not enough but it can not harm you if you heat up what you cooked the day before.
But... if you want to be sure eat potatoes. You can warm them up, make mashed potatoes out of it or fry them in some butter or oil. It's good for those farmers hoping for customers.
Nice post