Antoine Parmentier (1737-1813). 1872 illustration of the French nutritional chemist Antoine Augustin Parmentier. Parmentier promoted the potato as a food in France and the rest of Europe, and in 1772 the Paris Faculty of Medicine declared potatoes to be edible. Parmentier also investigated the making of bread, cheese and wine, and how to store cereal grains such as wheat and maize and their products, such as flour. He also investigated mineral waters, mushrooms and sea biscuits. Parmentier was responsible for the first French smallpox vaccination campaign (under Napoleon), starting in 1805.