Potatoes often get a bad rap for being fattening. When people go on diets, potatoes are one of the first things to go, as if potatoes are some sort of guilty pleasure that will make or break a weight-loss plan.

This is strange reasoning indeed. Given the choice between blowing a diet over a potato or something really interesting, like a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, anyone who picks the potato should have to subsist on hardtack and swill for a week.

In fact, your basic russet contains fewer than 100 calories and no fat. What makes the potato hazardous to the waistline is the stuff we add in and on the globs of butter and sour cream, the grated cheeses. That’s also what makes eating a potato worth the trouble.

Let’s face it: The spud is a utility vegetable that exists to serve a higher purpose. It was meant to be dressed. In its unadorned state, the potato is a blank canvas awaiting our inspiration.

If not for the potato, gravy would have nowhere to go and some entrepreneur would never have thought to invent those strange, little bacon crumbles that taste like salty beef jerky and wouldn’t be tolerable if other potato toppings weren’t in the mix. (If I’m not mistaken, those bacon things became entrenched as a potato topping in the early ’70s, which explains a lot. Placed in context with the eight-track tape deck and the Ban-lon shirt, it’s even a little scary.)

But I digress. The important point here is that no one ever craves a potato per se. The reason we get involved with potatoes because it’s the only way we know to eat half a stick of butter without raising eyebrows.

I know this is true because the most flavorful part of a potato is the skin, and the skin is the part that most people don’t eat. We either peel it off or, in the case of the baked potato, leave it on the plate. Consider as well the phenomenon of the twice-baked potato, which is really just mashed potatoes in a biodegradable boat.

I suspect that the presence of a potato on the dinner plate also works some sort of psychological magic, making us think that the high-fact additives we put on the potato aren’t going straight to our arteries.

This is sort of like the myth that college students subscribe to, which says that drinking on a full stomach somehow keeps a person sober.

According to this line of reasoning, the potato, like the hamburger a drinker eats on the way to the bar, works like a sponge and keeps the bad stuff from entering the blood stream. I feel certain that this theory has been hashed out by plenty of young adults who should have been in their dorm rooms doing their biology homework.

In recent years, people who claim to be enthusiasts of the actual potato have sung the praises of spuds other than your basic whites and reds. Thanks to a greater awareness of potato diversity, we can now buy Yukon Golds, Russian fingerlings and other assorted varieties of potato in many grocery stores. These potatoes have a slightly different texture and in some cases the difference in flavor is significant.

Unfortunately, what happens when potatoes have a discernible flavor is that they no longer sit quietly on the plate, content to be a means of conveyance for other ingredients. In some cases, the flavor of the potatoes actually competes. You’re likely to be taken aback, for example, if you try to eat a potent Yukon Gold as if it were a russet unless, of course, you pile on enough toppings to drown out the flavor of the potato.