When you cook a potato...
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It doesn't. Like all things we use language to describe, they symbolic meaning of potato lives long after it's physical existence is gone. Samsies with people. That is why the ancients believed that if your name/story was kept alive, you could live forever.
The potato doesn't begin to be a potato nor does it stop. It's a potato to you as long as you name it such. When you decide to not name it a potato, it is no longer a potato to you.
LOL I thought of that after I posted and knew somebody would say it.
So when then does potato substance stop being potato substance?
Well it depends on your definition of potato substance. I'd say once its little potato macronutrients have been broken down totally to where it is no longer distinguishable as potato, and assimilated into your blood and shit that is when it is 100% no longer potato substance. However if you eat the skin and your digestion is poor and maybe some potato skin is intact in your shit, then you could probably still classify that as potato substance.
When is it turned to sugar? What happens to the rest of it in the mean time? Why this point and not for example when you chewed it up?
Actually, it does start the process of becoming "sugar" in your mouth. Your saliva has digestive enzymes.
And one mustn't forget that when you heat food the chemical structure changes. And the nutrients in produce change over time. So a potato is in constant flux just like you or I. It's almost like asking if you are still you over time because you and your cells and personality all change day to day. Do you think potatoes have souls?
So what if it became distinguishable, say from a subtractive algorithm, if we had the technology to identify the entire state of the body before eating the potato, and then identify the entire body after eating the potato, you should be able to subtract the first state from the second state and the difference will be discernable as potato substance.
Ok. Then I guess the point in time where the person's body state reverts back to what it was before they ate the potato, then that would mean the potato's substance has terminated. But that's only if you define substance as effect on the body. And there could also be non-potato factors at play influencing the body state.
Yeah. I'm just demonstrating vague predicates - or trying to. A potato is a collection of stuff. When you eat it, that collection of stuff is broken up, separated, converted to energy - but one thing that doesn't happen is that it doesn't actually get destroyed. It gets converted to heat, work, and waste mass, yes, but that finite collection of stuff doesn't actually disappear at all.
So really it's about the definition of potato.