PUNO, Peru — At a market along frigid Lake Titicaca, the vendor caught a visitor eyeing her display of chuno, black and white potatoes as hard as charcoal briquettes.
She explained how they are made: Peasants place them in a reed basket to be frozen in an icy river. Later, some stomp them to remove excess water.
Sensing skepticism about the freeze-dried concoction, Juana Rojas made her pitch.
"Cut it in half, put some cheese in the middle, you'll love it," said Rojas, 62, who grew up in this region more than two miles high. "And you don't even need a fridge."
In the same spirit, the Peruvian government has launched a high-profile campaign to sell its own people on the glories of the potato, a task that is strangely difficult given that the tuber was first domesticated in these Andean highlands about 7,000 years ago.
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With rising food prices putting poor consumers at risk around the world, Peru is touting the potato as a cheap and nutritious alternative. The potato has been largely untouched by a spike in commodity prices driven in part by a demand for crops in alternative fuels.
The Peruvian government has bankrolled advertisements and recruited restaurant owners to tout the tater. Officials also recently approved sanitary standards so upscale urban consumers can feel comfortable buying even niche products like the tunta, the white version of the freeze-dried chuno.
The push coincides with the United Nations' International Year of the Potato, which has included scientific conferences and even photography exhibits on the potato.
Potato consumption in Peru has dropped steadily, so officials and companies are turning to nationalist campaigns to boost this vital crop. One ad for a new brand of potato chips shows highland farmers and urges, "Let us support our brothers."
Miguel Ordinola, a top official with the International Potato Center in Lima, said the decline of the potato co- incided with a massive migration from the countryside to the capital. In Lima, consumers had greater access to cheap rice, bread and pasta.
Class issues come into play, too.
"The problem of foods with traditional roots is that people associate them with the poor," said Ordinola, who directs the Project for the Innovation and Competitiveness of the Peruvian Potato. "We have to transform the potato."
Annual potato consumption per capita has dropped nearly 50 percent from its peak of about 250 pounds in the 1970s, according to the center. The government's goal is to increase annual consumption in Peru to around 220 pounds by 2011.
If Peruvians need to be wooed back to the potato, it will be an even tougher sell to promote the white, rock-hard tunta in cosmopolitan Lima, a central coastal city.
The resistance comes more from regional customs, less from taste. It would be like trying to push lobster rolls in El Paso or grits in Salt Lake City.
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