Battle of the sweet potatoes

Are men and women really that different? Apparently when it comes to sweet potatoes, they are.

That’s the word from Russel Slate (a.k.a “Pa” Tater), a 62-year-old farmer from Lawsonville who oversees the potato exhibit at the Expo Center. Last year, he explained, eight men and eight women sampled two varieties of sweet potatoes - the Stokes Purple and the Beauregard. The results were revealing.

“All eight men preferred the purple potato because it was creamy with a firm texture,” Slate said. “But seven out of eight of the women liked the Beauregard because it was softer.”

However, when the women were told that the Stokes Purple was better for them - it has twice the Vitamin E of blueberries, Slate said enthusiastically - “they said they’d switch.”

Who knew?

Slate said he doesn’t sell his favorite variety of sweet potatoes. “The Covingtons and the Beauregards are the most popular types because you can get 650 to 750 boxes of them per acre,” he said. “But the Puerto Ricans are the sweetest and best. Thing is they’re the ugliest things you’ve ever seen, and you can only get about 150 to 200 boxes of them per acre.”

He paused, then added, “Farmers like to say ‘We plant many to sell and a few to eat.'”