It is at times like this where one must look to history and its lessons. I hereby consult the foremost on accurate information. . .Wikipedia. It turns out that there was a similiar occurence in Ireland over 150 years ago.

The following was accessed 11/10/2007 from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Potato_Famine_(1845-1849)#Claims_of_potato_dependency


CLAIMS OF POTATO DEPENDANCY
Jeremy Rifkin, in his book Beyond Beef, writes "The Celtic grazing lands of...Ireland had been used to pasture cows for centuries. The British colonized...the Irish, transforming much of their countryside into an extended grazing land to raise cattle for a hungry consumer market at home.... The British taste for beef had a devastating impact on the impoverished and disenfranchised people of...Ireland.... Pushed off the best pasture land and forced to farm smaller plots of marginal land, the Irish turned to the potato, a crop that could be grown abundantly in less favorable soil. Eventually, cows took over much of Ireland, leaving the native population virtually dependent on the potato for survival (pp. 56,57)."


DEATH TOLL
No one knows how many people died during the period of the Famine, although more died from diseases than from starvation.[18] State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, while records kept by the Roman Catholic Church are incomplete.[19] Eye witness accounts have helped medical historians to identify both the ailments and effects of famine, and have helped to evaluate and explain in greater detail features of the famine. Quaker, William Bennett in Mayo wrote of

" three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs ... perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stages of actual starvation. [20] "

Revd Dr Traill Hall, a Church of Ireland rector in Schull, described

" the aged, who, with the young are almost without exception swollen and ripening for the grave.[21] "

Marasmic children also left a permanent image on Quaker Joseph Crosfield who in 1846 witnessed a [22]

" heartrending scene [of] poor wretches in the last stages of famine imploring to be received into the [work]house...Some of the children were worn to skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone... "

William Forster wrote in Carrick-on-Shannon that

" the children exhibit the effects of famine in a remarkable degree, their faces looking wan and haggard with hunger, and seeming like old men and women. [23] "

and furthermore. . .

'As early as 1844, John Mitchel, one of the leading political writers of Young Ireland, raised the issue of the "Potato Disease" in The Nation; he noted how powerful an agent hunger had been in certain revolutions.[51] Mitchel again in The Nation on 14 February 1846, put forward his views on "the wretched way in which the famine was being trifled with", and asked, had not the Government even yet any conception that there might be soon "millions of human beings in Ireland having nothing to eat."'



Clearly, potato epidemics were:

1. Outrageously overlooked by the masses and not taken seriously

2. Pushed aside for more "beef oriented" options



After much consideration about the Wendy's "out-of-potato" conundrum, several historians and scientists have recommended the following solution to this problem:


IF EATING AT A WENDY'S THAT HAPPENS TO BE OUT OF POTATOES ON TUESDAYS AND DIAGNOSED WITH CELIAC SPRUE, THEN ORDER A HAMBURGER AND REMOVE BUN.