Cooking the Tree of Life - Potato: the Perfect Human Food February 9, 2011

In celebration of the 202nd anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, the State Museum presents cooking demonstrations that highlight the evolution of domestic food. For the first few million years, the potato tuber was just a nifty adaptation to help plants store a bit of energy underground. Then humans discovered how nutritious it was, started experimenting with its evolution, and created the perfect human food. Dr. Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the State Museum, gives the evolutionary back-story to the tuber that changed the world, and the Food Network's Chef David Britton cooks up examples of cuisine it has inspired.