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Do Potatoes Belong in a Healthy Diet?

Do Potatoes Belong in a Healthy Diet?

Love them or hate them, potatoes are versatile. You can enjoy them boiled, mashed, baked, and even fried in healthy oil on occasion, but somewhere along the way a potato has gotten a reputation for being a weight gain food, partially because they’re rich in high-glycemic carbohydrates and create a faster and more pronounced rise in blood sugar and insulin than non-starchy vegetables. Still, they’re not all bad. According to most dieticians, you can still enjoy a potato in moderation even if you’re trying to slim down.

Potatoes: Can They Be Part of a Healthy Diet?

When you buy a potato in the produce department at the supermarket, you’re getting a whole, unprocessed food, and depending upon how you prepare it – a potato can be a healthy, satiating, and satisfying addition to a meal. Researchers in Australia developed a “satiety index,” a measure of how filling foods are relative to one another. Guess which food topped the list? Depending on how you prepare them, potatoes can be super-satiating. In this study, a boiled potato ranked highest on the satiety index, being 3 three times more filling than white bread, while French fries were significantly less so.

Why is a boiled potato high on the satiety scale? Partially because they’re bulky and contain a decent amount of fiber, around 5 grams per serving. What contributes partially to the satiety of potatoes is the resistant starch they contain. Unlike starch your body breaks down and uses for energy, you can’t break down resistant starch, so it passes through your small intestinal tract without being absorbed. Instead, bacteria in the colon break down the starch and use it for food and energy through a process called fermentation.

A Good Source of Resistant Starch

Since resistant starch is an energy source for good bacteria, consuming foods with this indigestible form of starch promotes the growth of probiotic bacteria that help keep the lining of your colon healthy. The bacteria release short-chain fatty acids, like butyric acid, when they break down resistant starch, which may offer protection against colon cancer based on some studies.

The resistant starch in a potato is one characteristic that makes them an acceptable weight loss food. Not only does resistant starch fill you up, but it also acts as a fiber, lowering the calories you absorb when you eat a potato. In fact, a study showed eating foods high with resistant starch led to the consumption of 10% fewer calories over the subsequent 24-hour period. You may eat less if you munch on potatoes.

Boost Resistant Starch

Research even shows you can increase the quantity of resistant starch in potato by cooking it and refrigerating it for 24 hours before re-heating it again. During the cooling down process, the quantity of resistant starch rises. When you cook a potato, the starch in the potato binds to water molecules, creating an optimal structure for digestion and absorption of the starch, but when you cool it down, these bonds reform in a haphazard fashion, making the starch harder for your body to digest and absorb.

Cooling a potato down before eating it, even if you reheat it, offsets the big negative of eating potatoes – the effect they have on blood sugar. Diets high in resistant starch actually increase insulin sensitivity and lower the blood sugar response to a meal or snack – all good things.

Does a  Potatoe Have Other Health Benefits?

A medium potato supplies almost a third of the day’s requirements for vitamin C and they’re a good source of potassium. A medium-sized potato has only 160 calories, but most people load one up with butter, sour cream, and other high-calorie accouterments. Having about 33 grams of net carbs per serving, potatoes are not a low-carb food, but by cooling potatoes and reheating them, you should get less of a glycemic response when you munch on a potato – but watch those toppings!

Are Some Potatoes Healthier Than Others?

To maximize the health benefits, you get from a potato, think color. Sweet potatoes with their deep orange color are a good source of carotenoids, antioxidants that are important for eye health. Eating a diet rich in carotenoids may lower your risk for cataracts and acute macular degeneration, two of the most common causes of visual loss in adults. Carotenoids from dietary sources may also lower your risk for other health problems, including type 2-diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, based on preliminary research. Be aware that a sweet potato has less resistant starch relative to white potatoes.

Sweet potatoes aren’t the only potato jam-packed with body-friendly chemicals. Purple Peruvian potatoes are chock-full of carotenoids and another class of compounds called flavonoids, a large diverse group of phytonutrients with health benefits. You find flavonoids in many healthful fruits and vegetables as well as in tea and dark chocolate. Flavonoids are especially important for keeping your blood vessels and heart healthy. Red potatoes also contain natural antioxidants.

Watch How You Prepare Them

Obviously, deep-frying potatoes in a vat of processed oil isn’t the healthiest way to eat potatoes, but how you prepare them can affect their glycemic index, leading to a greater or lesser blood sugar response. The best way to limit the blood sugar rise you get from eating potatoes is to boil them. Then place them in the refrigerator for 24 hours and reheat them again before eating them. The dry heat of baking or roasting a potato actually concentrates the natural sugars and increases the glycemic index, so boiling is best. In general, sweet potatoes have a lower glycemic index relative to white potatoes when both are prepared the same way, but boiled white potatoes have a lower glycemic index than a baked sweet potato because of how they’re cooked.

The Bottom Line

Enjoy potatoes in moderation, preferably boiled, cooled, and reheated ones. Diversify your potato selections and boost your phytonutrient intake by enjoying colored potatoes – sweet potatoes, red or blue ones. Don’t make a potato the main vegetable in your diet, but enjoy them occasionally.

 

References:

Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2009;60 Suppl 4:258-72. doi: 10.1080/09637480902970975.

Mendosa.com. “What Really Satisfies”

WebMD. “Age-Related Macular Degeneration”

Today’s Dietician. Vol. 11. No. 9. September 2009. “Eating for Eye Health”

Oxygen Magazine. July 2011. “Fat Burning Taters”

Tahoe. “Potatoes: Filling or Fattening?”

Allen, Jonathan C. et al. Glycemic index of sweet potato as affected by cooking methods. Open Nutrition Journal 6 (2012).

Precision Nutrition. “Sweet versus Regular Potatoes”

J Nutr. 2002 May;132(5):1012-7.

 

Related Articles By Cathe:

Healthy, Lower Carb Alternatives to White Rice, Potatoes and Pasta

4 Carb-Cutting Tips That Work

5 Sumptuous Twists on Thanksgiving…That Won’t Crash Your Diet!

 

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