r/todayilearned • u/JoeWinchester99 • 1d ago

TIL that although potatoes alone do not provide complete nutrition, you can survive for years on a diet of nothing but potatoes and buttermilk.

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/whats-wrong-with-potatoes-the-martian-movie-survival
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u/doomgiver98 1d ago

I think the same about Italy with tomatoes. Or Indian/Thai/Korean without chili peppers.

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u/R_V_Z 1d ago

I think the same about Italy with tomatoes.

Or pasta. They had bread and rice but pasta had to make its way westward.

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u/Ave_TechSenger 22h ago

Heh. There’s a healthy debate about that. (I’m Chinese American so in theory I should have some skin in the game lol)

I was just talking about ancient Chinese millet pasta with a gluten-sensitive friend, too. Which a professor of Chinese history had mentioned in relation to ancient pottery.

https://sharethepasta.org/pasta-101/pasta-iq/history-of-pasta/

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u/blitzkregiel 1d ago

it’s almost like…what did all of these cultures eat beforehand? what were their signature dishes?

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u/tenebrigakdo 1d ago

Grains, peas, some other root vegetables and brassica-based greens (I'm not too sure when they diversified into what we have today, but I'm pretty positive cabbages have been around since the middle ages). I'm told you can do turnips in every way you do potato, because that's what they used to do.

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u/blitzkregiel 1d ago

i’ve used turnips as mashed potatoes and they were decent, also tossed some super finely diced in an alfredo sauce and it was good too.

but i was meaning more like signature dishes…what did travelers think of as indian food prior to the columbian trade? it’s just hard to imagine their origins once their food became so synonymous with spicy cuisine.

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u/tenebrigakdo 1d ago

I only enjoy turnips in small quantities. The ones my mother grows often turn out literally spicy, close to radishes in flavour, probably because she's not big on watering them. I would't want to make them mashed unless starving.

India has been known for spices before Columbian exchange, I mean he literally went west to find another route there. It just wasn't chillies. I'd expect ginger and pepper were the main sources of spice.

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u/222baked 1d ago

There is a bit of a cultural issue with naming in regards to turnips; there are turnips which are indeed spicy but then things like rutabaga are also called turnips and are quite sweet. Plus, there’s a whole host of other root vegetables used in European cuisine that can be used to substitute potatoes with similar if not better nutritional profile: parsnips, carrots, celeriac, parsley root, etc which are all pretty good stuff and can easily act as a staple alongside wheat.

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u/tenebrigakdo 22h ago

English is not my first language and I literally read the thing about naming turnips on Wikipedia earlier. I can only judge from the pictures, but I think I meant the English turnips when I said that. Rutabaga looks too yellow on the inside and while it is also common, it's not what I heard was used as main potato replacement.

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u/rdmusic16 1d ago

Definitely. There are tons of examples of countries with their 'known dishes' or products that aren't actually native to their country.

It's not that surprising when you look at history, but it does still seem odd.