The Truth About Potato Salad

By Choire Sicha July 6, 2015

So what I also have to say tonight is that Native people do potato salad but that it originates from Black culture.

— Lauren Chief Elk (@ChiefElk) July 4, 2015

So respecting the dish and standing up against the desecration of it courtesy of white people should be an important decolonize effort.

— Lauren Chief Elk (@ChiefElk) July 4, 2015

The really wacky thing that happens when you start researching the history of potato salad (and, yes, potatoes were first cultivated in… present-day Peru or Chile or Bolivia?) is that potato salad appears to be the most horrifying vector of food poisoning! Whether you want typhoid fever or “restaurant-associated type A botulism” or WINTER VOMITING DISEASE, potato salad is the first place you should turn! Glad that’s settled.