Please eat more potatoes, pleads Belgium

It's one of the more unusual appeals to have been made during this coronavirus pandemic. With restaurants, hotels and cafes closed throughout Belgium, the potato industry in that country is in a desperate way. Not enough people are eating French fries and vast amounts of potatoes are going to go to waste. One of the things that surely health officials and experts are going to have to worry about in the future is the emergence of overweight, unexercised human beings venturing out from their homes after months in lockdown. So the Belgian plea to eat more potatoes won't go down well. But it's a thought. If restaurants are going to stay closed for another month or two what WILL happen to all the food that normally would be sitting in restaurant fridges ready to be cooked for customers. There are going to be food mountains of every kind in every country. Unsold food mountains mean bankruptcy for the growers. The potential for gloom and doom in the food and eating world is another reason why at some stage, in the not too distant future, we are going to have to see restaurants reopening even if filling just half an establishment at any one time. A lot of restaurants struggle to get maximum bums on seats anyway, so it wouldn't be too much of an imposition for the government to stipulate that every other table should be kept vacant. Personally I can't wait to go back to my favourite restaurants and I promise, Belgian potato farmers, that when I do I will order some French fries. No hardship there on my part.