White Foods: Tasty and Healthy?

These days, we hear a lot about how healthy it is to eat colorful foods.  Purple potatoes are praised for a lower sugar content, farmer's markets offer a veritable rainbow of colorful heirloom tomatoes, radishes are marketed as Easter Egg colors and even some big box stores offer carrot bunches that do not include a single orange one.  While I admit I often grow foods because the color choices intrigue me, like the deep orange-red eggplants now in season, when it comes to taste, sometimes color is not always an indication of how delicious the food might be.

Beautiful eggplants look like baby pumpkins

When my daughter was about seven years old, she only ate white foods.  Bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, bananas, grits, all foods lacking in color were appealing to her.  Worried about her health, I mentioned my concern to her pediatrician, who assured me she was healthy and the all-white-food diet was a phase.  The stage lasted longer than I anticipated, but the pattern broke when our family dined at a restaurant that only served purple potatoes and she was faced with the choice of trying the purple potato mash or going hungry while the rest of her family enjoyed a meal.  She decided to try "just a bite," but after one taste, the kid cleaned her plate.  Following the purple potato success, red tomatoes became another favorite, succeeded by green beans, orange carrots and soon, I no longer worried about my daughter's diet.  

Recently, while reviewing farm notes, I noticed something that made me smile.  In addition to how certain plant varieties perform each season, I include comments about flavor.  For example, my notes for Cream Sausage tomatoes include, "One of the most delicious cooked tomatoes, intense tomato flavor."  Cream Sausage is a paste-type tomato that is creamy white.  I flipped through pages, smudged with farm soil and rain drops, and found my notes for my grandmother's white cucumbers.  "One of the best-tasting cucumbers, excellent for sandwiches and cold soup."  

Cream Sausage tomatoes make the best soup

As far as potatoes go, the purple ones may be healthy, but our family's favorite baking potato is Purple Viking, which, despite the name, has a brilliant white, buttery smooth flesh.

Within Purple Viking's colorful skin is bright white flesh

As I read my notes about summer squash, "Chef customer reports his favorite is the white one," and watermelon, "Small yellow fruit is almost white, but very sweet, with a nice crisp texture," I remembered worrying about my daughter's childhood food preferences.  Perhaps if I had known about the delicious white heirloom plants I now grow, we would have avoided unpleasant family meal discussions.  As a matter of fact, we all probably would have enjoyed a "white diet."  

When choosing heirloom seeds to grow or shopping at your local farmer's market, try some white foods.  Sometimes, it is not all about color!

This small yellow melon is almost white

 

White summer squash was a chef customer's favorite