lthough Peru has a long history of potato agriculture, these tubers only spread to the rest of the world relatively recently. After Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in 1492, it took several decades before the first potatoes arrived in Spain. Thus the Spaniards “discovered” the potato in 1532, but the (the potato, alias ) and , which we know as the sweet potato. The Europeans were also slow to welcome this new food source onto their tables. But the European regents of the time soon realised potatoes were the answer to keeping their subjects alive: they were cheap and filling, and it was more difficult for plundering enemies to destroy potatoes than fields of grain. However, the fake news of the 16th century created uncertainty with reports that potatoes were poisonous. There were also sayings such as, “They are the devil’s apples growing underground.”
