Ep. 7: The Potato’s Role in Nutrition and the Environment

John Mesko (00:06):

Resource positive agriculture describes what we all want; a food and farming system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world. In this podcast I’ll explore how agriculture can be a force for good on everything from the environment to people and our society. This is John Mesko, and welcome to the Resource Positive Agriculture Podcast. I’m really looking forward to this discussion today. My guest is Bonnie Johnson, a dietician who has recently started as the Director of Nutrition and Industry Relations with Potatoes USA. Welcome, Bonnie.

Bonnie Johnson (00:52):

Hey, thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

John Mesko (00:54):

It’s really good to talk to you. For those listeners that are out there, our conversation today is really an extension of something you and I got started talking about earlier this week when we were both at a meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. I have spent 30 years of my career working with farmers to help them make good decisions about farming practices, and I think we do a pretty good job of that at the Potato Sustainability Alliance, particularly obviously with potato farmers. But sometimes in my career, and in my world, we forget a little bit that agriculture is all about the food, and the food we produce tells the story of the way we produce it. And so it was interesting to meet you, Bonnie, and to hear a little bit about the work that you’re doing at Potatoes USA. Maybe you can tell the listeners a little bit about your role, and some of the things you’re expecting to see happen in your work here going forward.

Bonnie Johnson (02:02):

Yeah, well that’s funny, I think that we have a fairly parallel path. I’ve spent the last 25 years working with commodity marketing boards, helping farmers tell their positive nutrition story to the public, and to healthcare professionals. And so at Potatoes USA I’m in a brand new position, they haven’t had a role like this before, and I think it’s a testament to the acknowledgment that nutrition really will drive food production, not only for potato growers, but for the larger industry as we move into the future. There’s so much attention on eating patterns, healthy eating patterns, even hunger and food accessibility, that nutrition has become almost the lead story when we talk about food. Whether it’s recipe demos and learning how to cook, or whether we’re talking to a dietician or a physician about our health and what we can do to improve it.

John Mesko (03:06):

Well, I think it’s really interesting. A couple of times I’ve been to meetings with Potatoes USA, where I’ve learned about some of the stories that are out there about potatoes. Potatoes as you say, don’t often get the attention they deserve in the nutrition world, in the dietician world, what are some of the challenges that are out there? Some of the issues and implications around potatoes in our diet?

Bonnie Johnson (03:39):

Well, I think there are a couple of different ways to look at it. For the first one, potatoes are America’s favorite vegetable. So I think from a certain perspective, dieticians and nutritionists don’t think that they need to talk to their patients or consumers about the nutritional benefits, because they recognize that they’re just eating them. Unfortunately, what we’re finding is that the only thing that potatoes are really recognized for is their carbohydrate content. And while we know that that’s really important for fuel, for both your body and your brain, it isn’t the only thing that potatoes is all about. A medium-sized potato has more potassium than a banana, and we know that people recommend bananas all the time, not only for athletic performance, but for some of the benefits around blood pressure regulation. And we know that less than 3% of Americans get enough potassium, so to know that a medium size potato provides almost double what a banana does, it’s kind of amazing.

Bonnie Johnson (04:41):

The other thing is vitamin C. We don’t recognize how much vitamin C a potato can provide. We think that something has to be orange in order to provide vitamin C, when actually anything white is also fairly high in vitamin C. And people think that most Americans get enough, but the fact is we’re deficient in vitamin C as well, we’re not eating enough vegetables in general, so a lot of these vitamins and minerals that we only get from vegetables are going to be consumed in really low quantities. Now, one of the other things that we run into, is that whether it’s by a government agency or just a general educator, potatoes sometimes fall into that starch category, and are lumped in with things like breads, and pastas, and rice. But when you look at the actual nutrient profile, potatoes do not even come close to what those things provide, and they don’t come close to the nutrients that potatoes provide. They’re really on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their profiles, and a potato matches more closely with things like broccoli and green beans than it does with a serving of pasta.

John Mesko (05:56):

That’s very interesting. I mean, I think something you said is that we eat potatoes, it’s our favorite vegetable. I saw a statistic somewhere that a very high percentage of the meals that are consumed by Americans include potatoes. Whether that’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner, potatoes are on the plate quite a bit. And I think that’s maybe surprising to a lot of people, even though everybody is aware of their own consumption of french fries, or whatever it is that they value. One of the things that I was surprised to learn recently, was about how potatoes, by some researchers, are not considered to be vegetables at all. And you mentioned a little bit about that, that they just kind of fall in the starch category, but where did that come from? How did it get started, that potatoes aren’t considered a vegetable by some?

Bonnie Johnson (07:01):

Yeah, by some. And I wish that I knew the history behind that, I suspect that it’s because at one point we classified foods based on their macronutrient content, and macronutrients being carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. And so because potatoes are higher in carbohydrates than other non-starchy vegetables, they may have been put into a starch category that included those other foods. What we know now, and the way that foods are categorized now, is much more by their complete nutrient package, which includes both vitamins, minerals, and even some phytonutrients. So that’s how that potato really rises to the vegetable category, and earns a really strong place there. I think it’s also really important to say that one of the things we know about potatoes, is that when people eat them they also eat more of other vegetables, so we like to call them a springboard vegetable. And I think it gets confused with maybe being just part of a side dish, or an additional side dish, rather than part of that vegetable component of a meal.

John Mesko (08:21):

That’s very interesting. I guess like a lot of people, I grew up on a farm, and we ate meat and potatoes probably every single night for dinner. I mean, I don’t recall eating too many other menus for the evening meal as a kid. Maybe in the summertime we’d eat a meal, or we just had sweetcorn or something like that, but potatoes were on the menu pretty much every day, and I think a lot of people grew up that way. And I think maybe they’re on the menu as frequently or more so today, but people maybe aren’t aware of it, or they don’t think about it as much. I don’t know, do you have any thoughts on that?

Bonnie Johnson (09:10):

I think it’s a really interesting cultural phenomena. My mom grew up on a cattle ranch, and grew up that way also, meat and potatoes, maybe a vegetable at dinner every single night. She ended up at school in Boulder and turned into a hippie, and we changed a lot of the ways that we ate at my house. But I do think it’s cultural, I think it’s generational, and I think a lot of that has to do with the availability of other ingredients that has grown so rapidly in the last 25, 30 years. You didn’t used to be able to get an avocado out of season, and now you can get them year round. You didn’t ever get a mango in Colorado, but now you can get them year round. So I think availability of ingredients has a lot to do with how our eating patterns have changed, but I think we can see by consumption data that potatoes are still on the plate, and what’s missing is that recognition that they bring a really important nutritional value to the plate, they aren’t just a plate filler.

John Mesko (10:16):

Right. I think a lot about the global view of crop production, farming, food production, and globally potatoes have a tremendous story to tell as well, in terms of how they are consumed around the world.

Bonnie Johnson (10:36):

Without a doubt. And there’s more to it around the world in terms of affordability, and versatility, and providing in some cases the best source of fuel that populations can get their hands on. And so in some, especially developing countries, potatoes are significantly more valuable than other crops that might be there. Just because of their carbohydrate content and the nutrient value that those potatoes bring to the plate, that they aren’t finding in other things like white rice, or even pasta, something like that.

John Mesko (11:18):

Our conversation from earlier this week, we talked a little bit about the similarities between human nutrition and crop production. And we talked about how in the soil, when we’re talking about crops being produced from an agronomic perspective, looking at a crop in the field, we’re dealing with a living system. And the living system reacts differently based on geography, time of the calendar, rainfall, temperature, everything impacts the response of a living system to a change in production. At PSA we’re really looking at ways we can help farmers to make good decisions about production practices. But similarly, it’s maybe even much more obvious that nutrition, and the discussion around the diet that people have, and the food that people consume, that’s a living system, and people react differently to different foods, just like a soil reacts differently to different nutrients that are added.

Bonnie Johnson (12:31):

And I would actually argue with you that while we may see the human body as more of a living system, we may recognize it as a living system more so than soil health or agronomy, I think what we’re missing is that every single living body is different, and so you can’t expect everything to respond the same to the same foods. And with population based nutrition recommendations, that’s basically what we’re saying, is everybody processes food the same way. And with the push, with the advancement towards more personalized nutrition, I think we’re recognizing that there are intricacies in terms of what you eat with certain foods. How they’re prepared, when they’re eaten, in addition to just your basic genetics that impacts processing of food, that really will have an influence on how we make eating pattern recommendations into the future.

John Mesko (13:38):

I think I maybe even mentioned to you, my cousin, his name is Pete, I’m sure he’s not listening, but maybe he is. I mean, we obviously share DNA, but this guy when we were growing up would eat three plates of food at Thanksgiving; turkey, mashed potatoes, all of the typical foods that you’d see. And has always been, and to this day, is very slender, very fit, and eats more food than anybody I know on a regular basis. And I know that I don’t eat anywhere near the amount of food he does, and I’m probably just as active as he is, and yet my body handles that a little differently. So I think you’re absolutely right, and I suppose that’s to the chagrin of many people who are looking to change the way they look from time to time.

Bonnie Johnson (14:35):

It is, and I can even make a closer association. My mom had type 2 diabetes, and now my sister has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. And in talking to my physician on a yearly basis, I’m nowhere close, and neither is my father. So it is really interesting to see what genetics you do pick up from certain people, and then also how those genes are really interacting with your environment at the same time.

John Mesko (15:06):

Well, I think this is a fascinating discussion, because in our society, and in our world, and I think maybe it’s just human nature, we like to boil things down to a cookie cutter, predictable way of doing things. And that is really what has happened in the discussion around sustainability or sustainable agriculture, we have other types of agriculture being talked about, such as regenerative agriculture. On this podcast, we talk a lot about resource positive agriculture, and that’s not really intended to add a new word to the vernacular, it’s really intended to encompass all of the different aspects of improving agriculture. I think as we have talked about what has happened in agriculture over the last 50 years, in the early 1960s agriculture was seen as a problem environmentally, and many changes, many iterations of progress have happened over the years. To where now as is evidenced by the Biden Administration putting out billions, with a B, dollars to support the adoption of what they’re calling climate smart agriculture. Another term for sustainable agriculture, or regenerative agriculture, or as we’re saying here, resource positive agriculture.

John Mesko (16:37):

These are practices and initiatives that are designed to take the resources that we have available, and put them to use in a way that leaves the environment and the people that work in the environment in as good or better condition going forward. And one of the things that occurs to me in this conversation as we think about resource positive agriculture, is when we make decisions on the farm to change the way we produce food to accommodate for an improvement in the environment in a true resource positive manner, what impacts then follow through to the nutrition of the food that is produced? And I’m curious if there are ways in your discussions about nutrition and diet, how does sustainability and the impact of that food item on the environment relative to its nutrition come into play?

Bonnie Johnson (17:41):

From a nutrition perspective, when we talk about sustainability of the food system, in many cases we’re talking about how accessible the food is to large populations, as well as how can those nutrients within the food be used best by the human body. So it’s a really interesting question, and I think it’s again, a really positive story for potatoes, because they’re versatile, they’re affordable, and people love them. They’re packed with nutrition that is really, to me, a sustainable source of quality nutrition for very large populations. So in terms of nutrition sustainability, it’s very powerful for potatoes. Now, I think that there’s another side of this question that you and I talked about the other night, and that is, what can farmers do to improve soil health and even the environmental conditions where food is grown, to increase the nutritional value of the food that’s grown in the ground?

Bonnie Johnson (19:04):

And I’m not sure that anybody has really tapped that as well as it should be at this point, I think some people are thinking about it. Growing rice in vitamin A fortified soils creates a higher vitamin A content rice, but even that is still not as affordable as just fortifying the rice once it’s been harvested. So you have to look at it from a number of different ways, not just from, how does it come out of the ground, but how economical is it in terms of putting it on people’s plates? I don’t think that we have even scratched the surface in that.

John Mesko (19:45):

I agree, I think we’ve got a long way to go. But one of the things I’ve learned from really the folks there at Potatoes USA, is that there are people in the world who look at the diet of large groups of people, like you say, and measure that diet’s impact on the environment. I mean, we all are aware that beef, for example, is under pressure, because there are some who believe that that is not an environmentally friendly food, I’m not really going to debate that here. But there are folks out there who are measuring the impact environmentally of different foods, and it’s important I think to all farmers, but often we’re talking about potatoes of course, that we make sure that measurement is accurate, that potatoes get a fair assessment in that arena. Because I think there are folks who would like to see certain foods being minimized, and other foods being maximized, based on their perceived impact environmentally.

Bonnie Johnson (21:03):

Yes. And I would go one step further, in saying that it’s not only the environmental sustainable impact that needs to be measured, it needs to be connected to what that means to human health. So if you remove an important source of a single nutrient from the diet, because you decide that it’s not environmentally sustainable, what does that mean to people who consume that food as their primary source of that nutrient? What are you going to replace it with? And I think that there’s this missed association a lot of times between environmental impact and human health impact.

John Mesko (21:52):

I think you’ve hit it right on the head. I mean, there is a tremendous infrastructure in place currently that delivers potatoes to populations around the world, and along with delivering potatoes, delivering all the good nutrients that you’ve mentioned and talked about in a very efficient way, because of the density of the nutritional profile in potatoes. And so if potatoes were to be evaluated less fairly, or to be seen as less environmentally sustainable for whatever reason, and there was a discouragement of potatoes because of that, how is that infrastructure going to be created to replace potatoes on the menu?

Bonnie Johnson (22:43):

Absolutely. And what does it do to overall healthy eating indexes? What does it do to diet? What does it do to potassium intake when we’re already not meeting that potassium recommendation? What would it mean to take away one of the most significant sources of potassium in the diet? That could be really, really detrimental from a cardiometabolic standpoint, from a heart health standpoint. And so like I said, you have to look at this as an entire system, you can’t look at it as just environment, just nutrition, just social, just financial, all of these things come together to make a viable efficient system.

John Mesko (23:29):

You’re talking about a system, and this is one of the things that’s been rolling around in my brain for a while now. Corn and soybeans, which are major crops obviously in the US, and around the world, are essentially grown in tandem every other year, or in some cases, corn and soybeans can be grown year, after year, after year. And a lot of times the environmental impact of those crops isn’t really evaluated in terms of the whole rotation. So if you just look at any crop, potatoes, or corn, or any crop on just a single year, if that crop is grown every year its environmental impact is different and more intense than a crop like potatoes, which may be grown every three years, or in some cases every five or six years, depending on where that crop is grown. Getting back to our earlier conversation, everything is different.

John Mesko (24:33):

But if we embrace, or if we take a look at, the entire rotation in how that crop impacts over a three, four, five year period, whatever that rotation looks like, along with the other crops that are grown in that rotation. Maybe it’s a small grain, maybe it’s a fallow, it could be any number of things that are in that rotation. And then evaluate the nutritional sustainability of that entire system, I think we have a much more interesting story to tell.

Bonnie Johnson (25:12):

I agree. And so taking just that snapshot of a year, and trying to determine anything about how it’s impacting the system, is like taking a snapshot of what you ate, like what we ate in Charleston, and saying that that’s how your overall eating pattern is, and that’s your diet quality. That one meal does not reflect your overall eating patterns, so it’s very similar in that you’ve got to look over time, and over all the different variables. And I think that’s one of the things that you hit on earlier, which is this oversimplification of all of these systems, and not recognizing how many different things are always impacting systems at the same time, or at different times, but at higher or lower levels.

John Mesko (26:03):

Yeah, this is great. And I think that we have really an opportunity now as we look at the future of this conversation around sustainability, around the impact of farming practices, not only on the environment, but also on the diet. I mean, one of the things we talk about in sustainability is farmer livelihood, we talk about food waste, so these are things that are impacting us at a number of different levels. I’m really excited about the opportunity to carry this conversation forward, I think the obvious crossover between food production and food consumption, agronomy and nutrition, human health, these are things that we probably don’t spend enough time on. And I hope that we can do more of that in the future.

Bonnie Johnson (26:57):

I do too, and that’s why I love where we are in helping farmers do the best that they can with what they do. Because for so long it has been siloed, and what a great opportunity for us to come together from a couple of different angles, and make sure that our food system is healthy enough to serve future generations.

John Mesko (27:23):

Well, that’s fantastic, Bonnie. How can folks learn more about what you’re doing at Potatoes USA? Can you tell us about the website and some of the things that are available to consumers and others out there?

Bonnie Johnson (27:35):

I sure can. The best website is potatogoodness.com, there you will find everything you want to know about the different varieties of potatoes that are available in the US, and their nutrition content. But most importantly there are thousands of recipes, ranging from indulgent to healthy, that you can put on your plate tonight. We have an amazing team at Potatoes USA that takes the time to develop recipes, create them in the kitchen, make sure that they’ll work for you in the kitchen. Because as one of my mentors said to me long ago, it’s not nutrition unless you eat it. So if you throw away broccoli every night, it’s not doing the trash can any good. Trash cans don’t need nutrients, human bodies do. So a matter of putting it in front of people in a way that they will eat it and get the nutrients from it is most important.

John Mesko (28:32):

Well, that’s fantastic. Thank you very much, Bonnie, for joining me on the podcast today. Looking forward to hearing more good things coming out of your work there at Potatoes USA.

Bonnie Johnson (28:41):

Great. Thanks, John.

John Mesko (28:49):

Thanks for tuning into today’s episode. To hear more podcasts like this please rate, review, and subscribe to Resource Positive Agriculture. We want to hear from you. Remember to visit potatosustainability.org for show notes from this episode, leave your feedback, and to learn more about how PSA is collaborating for potato sustainability. Thank you, and remember: stay positive.