Potatoes

Can you imagine life without French fries? Potatoes are very popular today. But in the past this was not true. Potatoes grew in South America five thousand years ago. But they only became popular in other places two hundred years ago.

In the 16th century, the spanish took the potato from South America to Europe. But the people in Europe did not like this strange vegetables. Some people thought that if you ate the potato, your skin would look like the skin of a potato. Other people could not believe that you ate the underground part of the plant. So they ate the leaves instead. This made them sick because there is poison in the leaves.

In the 1800s people started to eat potatoes. In Ireland potatoes became the main food. Then, in 1845, a disease killed all the potatoes in Ireland. Two million people died of hunger.

Today each country has its own potato dish. Germans eat potato dish. Germans eat potato salad, and the United States has the baked potato. And, of course, the French invented French fries. Now French fries are popula all over the world. The English eat them with salt and vinegar, the French eat them with salt and pepper, and the Americans with ketchup.

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