Adam Smith on the Potato Diet

Ancient Wisdom from the Wealth of Nations

In some parts of Lancashire, it is pretended, I have been told, that bread of oatmeal is a heartier food for labouring people than wheaten bread, and I have frequently heard the same doctrine held in Scotland.

I am, however, somewhat doubtful of the truth of it. The common people in Scotland, who are fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strong nor so handsome as the same rank of people in England, who are fed with wheaten bread. They neither work so well, nor look so well; and as there is not the same difference between the people of fashion in the two countries, experience would seem to shew, that the food of the common people in Scotland is not so suitable to the human constitution as that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.

But it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. The chairmen, porters, and coal-heavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions, are said to be, the greater part of them, from the lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with this root. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution.

Adam Smith:

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm

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The wise tell us that chips (US: steak fries) are one of the least healthy foods a man can eat. And I see no particular reason to doubt the wise on this matter.

And yet, if the potato be healthy on its own, or in combination with meat and dairy, I have to ask: What is it exactly about chips that is so bad for people?

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[ Note: Smith is writing in the 18th century, when the Irish people were also eating a certain amount of meat and dairy produce.

The Irish population exploded on its excellent and newly introduced staple food, and in the absence of war and disease eventually rose to match the carrying capacity of the land, a perfect Malthusian trap resulting in a huge number of people crammed into a small island in conditions of appalling poverty, living on a diet consisting almost entirely of potatoes. A true utilitarian paradise.

In the 1840s Phytophthora infestans arrived in Europe.

In 1847 the potato crop failed completely, resulting in one of the worst catastrophes in human history: an Gorta Mór.

God made the blight. God made the famine.

As a descendant of the strongest men and the most beautiful women in the British Empire, who has been known to cry while contemplating the fate of those who could not flee, I cannot recommend the adoption of an all-potato diet, and am against population explosions, monocultures, the repugnant conclusion, overpopulation in general, and God. ]