In time for Thanksgiving in the United States, The New York Times featured an article about the emergence of the sweet potato from an American holiday vegetable to one of the fastest growing vegetables in American diets, both at home and in restaurants.
“Food and farming experts attribute the sweet potato’s escape from the limited culinary prison of the Thanksgiving table to nutritional and cultural shifts. Sweet potatoes have become the darling of the diabetic and weight-loss set, a lifeline for parents whose children demand fries for nearly every meal and a boon for Southern farmers who are looking to replace tobacco.”
Nicholas Kristof echoes this acclaim for the sweet potato its potential to “save hundreds of thousands of children’s lives each year.” Kristof writes about malnutrition can kill even those who get enough food, if that food does not contain micronutrients like zinc, iron, vitamin A and others. Sweet potatoes contain sufficient quantities of these micronutrients, all in one convenient package.
The problem, Kristof writes, is that American sweet potatoes have not grown well in places facing chronic malnutrition, like sub-Saharan Africa. A genetically-modified version of the sweet potato was created that is now successfully grown in Uganda and Mozambique.
This form of the sweet potato is one example of other biofortified foods that scientists are developing (like “golden rice“), whose development and introduction into local diets is part of the contentious debate for those on both sides of the GM food divide.
Posted by Michael Lucivero.
Photo credit: The Food Network and The Daily Green.
