(ED—We found this article on www.mashed.com very interesting. We thought we would pass it along.)
When was the last time you really considered the humble potato? Potatoes may often get a guest-starring role at dinner, popping up in sides like mashed potatoes or French fries far more often than they take a main character role, but they shouldn't be overlooked. Potatoes are America's favorite vegetable, with the average American consuming 120 pounds every year. And for a food we love so much, it may come as a surprise how little we know about it.
While well-known to the Americas, potatoes only arrived in Europe in the 18th century, and at first, they were regarded with some skepticism. A member of the nightshade family, potatoes were often believed to be poisonous. It took converts like French agronomist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier to convince people to give them a try, which he did with a particularly successful marketing coup: persuading the king and queen of France to wear potato blossoms. (It probably didn't hurt that bread prices had recently skyrocketed, leading the poor to seek out alternate means of nourishment.)
This wild story is true; by contrast, however, many things you might think you knew about potatoes are pure myth. Here are some of the false facts about potatoes it's high time you stopped believing.
To read the rest of the article, go here: https://www.mashed.com/1476669/false-facts-potatoes/.