Root Cause

matter how you prepared them, just aren't appealing. That doesn't mean we stopped trying, though. Whether we eat them fried, baked, or freak a seed, we never ceased to make the seemingly inedible edible. Now, imagine a world where we never had French fry, or mashed potatoes or potato chips. A world where the potato wasn't just ignored, it was rejected and even feared. Strangely enough, that world wasn't so long ago.

It all started during the early sixteenth century, when the potato was first introduced to Europe by Spaniards who had brought it from South America. The French had no use for it beyond feeding their pigs. They even believed ingesting it would cause leprosy. Europeans as a whole kept their distance from potatoes for two hundred years until a man named Antoine Augustine Parmentier entered the picture. Antoine was a French pharmacist who had served during the Seven Years War.

In that time, he was captured by the Prussians as a prisoner of war and forced to eat potatoes lest he rather starved. Potatoes were a major crop in Prussia, with King Frederick the Second having ordered his peasants to grow them. Antoine, unlike his fellow Frenchman, didn't mind the taste of potatoes. In fact, he quite enjoyed them. He didn't develop leprosy, nor did he in tract any other maladies associated with them. Upon his release at the end of the war, he returned to France on a mission

to change people's minds about the misunderstood vegetable. He started by looking into the health benefits of the potato and discovered it provided help to those afflicted with dysentery. Antoine's research won him a scientific award in seventeen seventy three and was a small step in convincing the public that the potato was something to be enjoyed. Thanks to his help, France also removed a law forbidding the cultivation of potatoes,

which had been upheld since seventeen forty eight. It seems the tubers tides were turning except where the public was concerned. While potatoes were approved in certain medical practices, the average French person still saw them as harbingers of disease and death. Even the hospital where Antoine worked wouldn't let him practice his new brand of medicine on patients. The pharmacist had to find a way to change people's minds, and he

started at the top. He hosted dinner parties with special guests, including founding father Benjamin Franklin, where he served all kinds of potato based dishes to great success. He also gifted King Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette a bouquet of potato blossom flowers. Though these weren't potatoes themselves, he knew such a gesture would endear the royal family to his cause, and it did. Upon receiving the purple flowers, the queen tucked one into her hair while the King threaded another

into a button hole on his coat. King Louis asked for more information about the flowers and the fruit they bore. Antoine obliged by describing his plan, which intrigued the king enough to grant the pharmacist a plot of land on which to grow his crops. But simply growing them wasn't going to help if the average French citizens still saw them as inedible. So the resourceful Antoine hashed a scheme to trick everyone into eating potatoes. He hired armed guards

to stand watch outside his plot during the day. After all, anything protected so well must be worth stealing. Right at night, peasants would sneak in and steal the crops, bringing them home to feed their families and neighbors. Antoine told the guards to let them go even if they were caught. He didn't want to stop anyone from stealing his potatoes. Getting them into people's hands and mouths had been the

plan all along. It still took many years for the potato to gain in popularity, even during times of famine. People were still reluctant to grow and consume them. That is, however, until Parmentier wrote a brochure expounding on the versatility of the common potato. The Commission on Subsistence and Provisions published the pamphlets inviting people to not only grow and cultivate potatoes, but to submit recipes for inclusion in a forthcoming cookbook.

Even Napoleon Bonaparte got on board the tater train, and with his encouragement, the potato, once a source of disgust for many, became a staple of their cuisine and culture. It also gave the republic away to become self sufficient. However, it was one man's tire crusade for a misunderstood root vegetable that made him a French food icon. They even

erected a statue of him in his hometown. Antoine Augustine Parmentier, the man who gave the potato to France, a large, seemingly unstoppable force, one lone person raging against the machine. There's a reason we root for David and not Goliath. The latter is bent on destruction against the solitary crusaders standing up for what's right. Unfortunately, David and Goliath stories don't always end the way we hope. Oftentimes it takes a lot more than one person to affect the necessary change.

Then again, there's Wang Ilnin. Wang had been a farmer in a small Chinese village for most of his life. He left school at the age of ten to help his family, who also tended to the lay, and yet his desire to learn never waned. He read often, teaching himself knew things to improve his quality of life. By the time he reached his sixties. However, it wasn't the quality of his life he was worried about. It was the quality of his farm. It all started in the

year two thousand one. Wang noticed a strange smell in his home. He'd been celebrating the lunar New Year with his neighbor, preparing food and playing cards when a small flood of toxic water entered the house. He rushed outside to see where it was coming from, only to witness his land under siege by the same sludge. His crops were destroyed, as was his ability to make a living. After doing some investigating, Wang discovered the cause of his problems.

A local chemical company had been polluting his land. The water had been waste runoff from one of its facilities, and Wang wasn't the only victim either. Other farms in the village had also seen their land submerged under toxic waste, rendering it unusable for years to come. A village committee had previously agreed to lease almost seventy acres to Chihua Chemical Group, a subsidiary of the largest chemical company in China. The villagers had no say in the matter, and Chihua

Chemicals took no precautions in controlling their waste outputs. With their livelihoods in ruin, none of the farmers had the money to hire a lawyer. The chemical company was a formidable opponent, bringing in several hundred million dollars a year with an army of attorneys at its disposal. But Wang had to do something for himself, for his community and

for anyone else affected by the company's careless actions. Since he couldn't hire a lawyer of his own to take the company to court, Wang did the next best thing. He started studying the law himself. But the books he needed were expensive, and without a steady income, he had to find another way to get his hands on them. Luckily, the local bookstores had everything he needed to begin his

d i y legal education. The bookshop wouldn't barter, but they did allow him to come in and copy information into a notebook by hand, which he repaid by giving them sacks of corn. After five years of studying on his own, Wang sought out a Chinese environmental law firm

to help him with his case. They were sympathetic to his cause and offered him free legal advice, even helping him file a petition with the court to begin the lawsuit process, and he continued to study and fight for another eight years while Cheehua Chemicals kept pumping toxic waste into the land. Finally, in two thousand fifteen, the court system kicked into gear, and two years later the case

was over. Through his sixteen years of self teaching and legal maneuvering, Wang and his neighbors put together a mountain of evidence proving that Chiehua Chemicals was responsible for dumping fifteen to twenty thousand tons of toxic waste a year onto their farmland. The district courts agreed where the company had done was reckless, destructive, and unconscionable, and it was on them to make it right. Wang and his village were awarded the American equivalent of roughly one dollars in damages.

The victory was short lived, though Cheehua Chemicals appealed and the ruling was overturned, but that hasn't stopped Weighing from continuing his one man crusade against a goliath of a corporation. Though he may not live to see how it all plays out in the end, his will to fight is an inspiration for anyone who thinks they can't make a difference as just one person, Well, one person did. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious one