Remember that controversy about tomatoes? Back when Reagan was president, it was proposed that ketchup be considered a vegetable, so that lunches would be “nutritious”.

Not only was the concept insane (yet another WrongWing way to redefine items that receive government subsidies to benefit business), it is dead wrong. Because tomatoes are not vegetables- they are fruits!

That bad thinking  is still being perpetrated, since the USDA declared that orange juice is the most popular fruit in America. Amazingly, oranges are also a fruit- but juice????

So, it’s not just average Americans who are ill-informed (as in chocolate milk comes from brown cows), but that our government perpetrates fraud to promote various agricultural entities.
Which brings up some very interesting statistics. Like the most popular fruit/vegetable in America is the potato. Which we consume at the rate of 45 pounds per capita. Except… About 1/2 that consumption is via french fries (18) and potato chips (5).

Before we move on to other vagaries of our eating habits, consider those numbers. Drs. N. Veronese, M. Noale, G. Crepaldi, S. Maggi (National Research Council, Padua, Italy), M. Solmi (University of Padua), A. Vaona, J. Demuras, and D. Nicello (Azienda Health, Italy), P. Schofield (A Ruskin University, UK), A. Koyanagi (CIBERSAM, Spain), L. Fontana (Brescia Medical School, Italy) and B. Stubbs (NHS, UK) just published an article (Fried potato consumption is associated with elevated mortality: an 8-y longitudinal cohort study) in Clinical Nutrition. They studied 4400 older folks (45 to 79 y) for 8 years. (Actually, these subjects were part of an arthritis study, but did complete questionnaires on their food consumption.)

Of the 4440 subjects, 236 died during the study. The results- when looking at overall potato consumption- did not reveal that potatoes were bad for one’s health. (Damn it! I hate potatoes and was hoping I could convince a few of you folks to pass them by, too.) However, when the consumption of potatoes were split between those who consumed fried potatoes twice or thrice weekly, it seems that mortality results were different. The hazard ratio (HR) was 1.11 overall, but for those who consumed fried potatoes 2-3 times a week exhibited an HR of 1.95, and if they consumed fried spuds more than thrice weekly, their HR was 2.26.

Except- the total number who died were 236. And, only 34% of the folks listed that they ate potatoes. (That means 66% of the subjects were like me- they don’t eat potatoes.) And, for the piece de resistance, only 50 of the 236 who died consumed fried potatoes twice or more weekly. (As if they didn’t ameliorate the “increased mortality”, those who only consumed potatoes a few times a month also had elevated mortality rates, albeit lower than the more frequent spud consumers.

Now, back to the rest of the data. Tomato consumption is about 34 pounds per capital- but 2/3 of that is from sauce, primarily because Americans love pizza! (The actual numbers are 22 pounds via sauce and 12 fresh. I’m willing to bet a lot of those “fresh tomatoes” come with one’s fast food burgers, to boot.)

The data also signifies that the older we are, the more servings of vegetables we consume (although infants are higher, too- but that’s because we feed them baby food vegetables). It’s not clear if that’s because we older folks were taught the value of fresh vegetables- a lesson lost on the younger folks- or due to some other cause.

Trust me, vegetables are critical to our diet. NOT vitamin pills or supplements.

Consume them- and skip the potatoes;especially fried ones!

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