The title is factually wrong. Potato is indeed a vegetable as it is an edible part of a plant. But in common usage, when we say we should eat more vegetables, it really means green/colorful vegetables. A typical vegetarian meal in South India is white rice, sauteed white potatoes, and lentils (sambar) whereas in the North it is roti made from wheat and potato curry. Potato supposedly makes the meal healthy as a vegetable. Let's look at the origin of potatoes to understand why they should not be treated as a vegetable. Potato and many other roots/tubers naturally grow in the Andes mountains of South America. Potato met all the energy needs of the people who lived in these mountains. But it wasn't easy.
The potato plant stores its food as starch in its roots because of the extreme climate. The tuber is also a seed for new plants. Since there is no need for any animal intervention to propagate their seeds, the potato plant purposefully hides its cache under the ground. But animals( including us) found their trick and dug them out of the ground. The potato plant then made the potato bitter to stop the animals. But we found ways to remove the bitterness as well. The natives in South America found that repeatedly freezing and thawing not only removes the bitterness but also preserves the potatoes for decades. There are thousands of varieties of potatoes in South America that powered ancient empires like the Incas.
When the Spanish brought potatoes over to Europe, it was eaten as an alternative to wheat as they had seen how Incas eat them. In the span of a decade, the potato crop started to fail in Ireland. Ironically, the potato from South America caused the first mass migration of Europeans to North America. When the Europeans brought potatoes to India, it was considered a vegetable as folks did not want to let go of their native cereals, rice, and wheat. With the rise of fast food culture that started in the US, potato is mainly consumed in the form of fries as a side dish for burgers and snacks.
Since potato is rich in starch, the more we cook them, the more of the starch turns into sugar through a process called caramelization. Caramelization is the reason people have come to love those golden sauteed and fried potatoes. More importantly, potatoes displace green/colorful vegetables and result in the loss of essential micronutrients.
Next time you eat a potato, please let it take its rightful place as a dessert. And you can only have one dessert per meal. So, pick either a starchy vegetable like potato or a cereal like wheat, rice, etc.
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