Now that it is Lent, I have to brush up on the few dietary laws of the Catholic church. They make zero sense and, as I was discussing with a friend, are clearly the end result of Jesus' efforts to stir up business for his fishing industry. I mean, how is fish not a meat? It is the flesh of an animal that we consume for protein. But because it lives in water, we can eat it on the Fridays leading up to Easter? Whatever, at least we don't have to learn all that kosher business. All these rules got me thinking about food, and the most delicious things that probably shouldn't have been discovered as edible.
#5 - Potatoes
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"Guys, look what I found. Should we
try to eat it?" |
Gotta love the Peruvian natives who decided to pull these brown lumps of dinosaur shit out of the ground and figure out a way to eat them. Raw potatoes are pretty terrible, and can contain toxins that give you diarrhea and cramps, or even a coma and death. But the most off-putting part is that they are basically Mother Nature's blackheads; no one wants them, they grow beneath the surface, and they're ugly. I don't trust things that grow under earth's surface. If it was meant to be eaten we would be able to see it.
Vegetables need to take a lesson from fruits. Fruits are brightly colored and sweet and grow in plain sight; vegetables are bitter and ugly and hard to see. And in the case of the potato, you can't just pull it out of the ground and bite into it (unless you like the horrid taste of raw potato). But once you crack the potato code and learn how to make french fries, it's game over. Suddenly, potatoes are a staple of the American diet. They are a symbol of freedom and capitalism. And if the drunken Irish farmers hadn't completely focused their food supply around the potato (instead of, oh I don't know, fish? Ireland, you are an island!) and been forced to move to America during the blight, we wouldn't have the Celtics, the Dopkick Murphys, or Conan O'Brien. All thanks to someone trying to eat a potato.