Potatoes for Diabetics

Inulin is a carbohydrate which diabetics may eat. It occurs in artichokes, dahlia bulbs, elecampanes. But it is far less plentiful in foodstuffs than the appetizing starch of potatoes. If potatoes only contained inulin . . .

Professor Harold Hibbert of McGill University thought he could play the trick on Nature. An expert in the chemistry of plant substance who knew that bacteria synthesize cellulose from sugars, he called upon his colleague, Professor Ross Frisbie Suit, plant pathologist of Macdonald College, Quebec, for a supply of the bacteria which turns the juices of artichokes into inulin. They placed the organisms in small tubes and sealed the tubes securely to the stems of potato plants. The germs seeped into the potato plant, went to work on the juices and in a few days produced starch-free, inulin-rich potatoes. Although the experiments were successful in only a limited number of cases. Professors Hibbert and Suit last week cheerfully foresaw "the possibilities of obtaining a variety of other new types capable of serving as special foodstuffs."

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