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Fact of the Day More Information Pizarro's men were the ones who sacked the Inca Empire in the name of the Spanish on their pursuit of New World gold. While there, they were exposed to the potato crop for the first time. It was at that time the staple food of the Inca because of all the essential vitamins and nutrients contained within. Thinking the Inca and anything that came from the barbaric civilizations of the New World heathens was unfit for white people, the Spanish and Europe as a whole were completely against consuming potatoes.
Slowly the potato made its way up to the level of livestock feed. For a while this was the only use Europeans saw fit for the crop. Some peasants at the brink of starvation also had adopted eating potatoes; only as a last resort.
Since the wealthy and powerful were quicker to realize the nutritional value of the plant, they spread potatoes down the social scale. Being as potatoes were easy and cheap to come by as well as nutritious, the nobles thought of an ingenious way to get the common folk to adopt the staple into their diet. By establishing royal gardens of potatoes fully equipped with armed guards, the upperclassmen were able to entice the poor into stealing and eating potatoes of their own.
It took potatoes until the late 1700s to make their way into places like Holland and faraway Ireland. After all of this migration, the potato was brought back to the United States in America.
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