You might think that potatoes are one of the safest & most ordinary foods around. And you’d be right, unless you lived in France during the 1700s. Back then, people treated spuds like poison & banned them in parts of the country.
So why exactly were potatoes outlawed? How long did the ban last? And what finally turned the tide? Read on to find out.
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Key takeaways
Here’s what you’ll see as you read on:
- When the ban was announced & why
- What the medical authorities said about potatoes
- How prize contests helped turn opinions
The ban (1748) and the fear behind it
In 1748, the Parlement of Paris was the highest court in the land. And they forbade people in northern France from growing potatoes. Interestingly, though, the ban was only for growing the crop & you could eat it without worries.
So why was it banned? Many people believed that these crops could cause leprosy.
But before you think they were being silly, they had some good reasons for thinking this way. Potatoes are part of the nightshade family. Because many people were unfamiliar with them, they were suspicious of potatoes. Old medical ideas classified potatoes with other toxic plants.
The French courts didn’t like how the potato looked, either. To them, its spotted skin was a sign that it was un-Christian.
There’s also the fact that potatoes can be toxic…but only after they turn green. When this happens, they produce a chemical called solanine, which can make people ill. Of course, other countries were already planting potatoes without issue. Yet the French courts didn’t care.
What led up to the turnaround
By the late 1760s, France was dealing with food shortages & grain price problems. It put a lot of pressure on officials & thinkers. In fact, they were under so much pressure that they began revisiting “alternative” foods, with local academies & learned societies running contests on what plants might help people survive the leaner years.
Enter the potato.
Even though it had been rejected for years, it seemed like it might be useful after all. In 1772, the academy in Besançon offered a prize for the best paper on substitute foods. One of the most enthusiastic contestants was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. Later, he became the face of France’s potato revival.
A year before that Besançon contest, the Paris Faculty of Medicine approved a report dismissing the idea that potatoes caused illness. The faculty declared the old objections “poorly founded” & formally recommended the crop as safe. At long last.
Parmentier and his potato stunts
But Parmentier knew facts alone weren’t going to win everyone over. People still thought potatoes were strange, so he came up with tricks to make them look appealing.
One of these ideas was to plant potatoes near Paris & have guards watch over them in the daytime. However, the soldiers were just there to make neighbors curious. They left at night. When that happened, people slipped into the fields to steal the potatoes, meaning people who never would’ve tried them before grew them on their own.
It was pretty smart. Who doesn’t love trying something forbidden?
Prizes and publications
Momentum picked up quickly. In 1772, Parmentier’s potato-focused paper won recognition in Besançon, and just a year later, he published his book Examen chymique des pommes de terre. This book discussed the plant’s nutritional value & helped him push for broader acceptance in French society.
By putting science & chemistry behind the potato, Parmentier helped convince skeptics that the crop was both safe & practical.
Was the ban officially “lifted,” and when?
Many people claim that 1772 was the year that the ban ended, but that’s not strictly true. What we do know is that, after the 1771 medical approval, resistance faded quickly. People stopped seeing potatoes as a health risk by the early 1770s. It became a serious food crop with backing from the monarchy itself during the next decade.
However, even with the medical approval & Parmentier’s efforts, people didn’t adopt the crop immediately. Regions like Normandy were still slow to plant potatoes in the 1770s. They just couldn’t trust it. But in other places, especially where soil conditions made the crop attractive, it caught on faster.
Agronomists such as Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau were already experimenting with potatoes before Parmentier. Many voices were nudging the public toward acceptance. It just took time for the general population to catch up. And they did.
What happened next in the 1780s
Things changed a lot in the 1780s. In 1789, Parmentier published a full treatise on potato cultivation that was issued “by order of the king.” This royal backing sealed the deal. Now, potatoes were officially part of French agriculture, even though decades earlier, they’d been dangerous. And it’s been part of French cuisine ever since.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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