So many people are scared of eating potatoes these days – whereas in the past potatoes were the mainstay of the diets of lean and healthy people.
What gives?
The main problem is that our lives have changed and most of us are not working in the fields daily. This concentrated high energy source gives more energy (calories) than most of us need anymore, and especially if we are frying them in oil.
They are still great food – comfort food – but because of our lifestyle changes towards more sedentary living, we need new guidelines.
Potato Nutrition
Potatoes are nutritious – they are full of calcium, iron, magnesium, Vitamin C and Vitamin B6.
As a plant root, their job is to store all the energy the green plant will need to grow. They supply the energy for the potato plant, and the minerals come from the soil or the water.
Cooking Methods
Fried Potatoes
This cooking method increases blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes risk.
It also allows a carcinogen (cancer-causing agent), acrylamide, to form. You can read <here> how to reduce acrylamide formation on your baked potatoes (or toast).
Adding oil adds lots of calories, and the salt that is usually added means you will eat more of them.
Therefore, this cooking method is a recipe for weight gain!
Boiled or Baked Potatoes
These methods retain the health benefits of potatoes.
To improve blood sugar control, leave the skin on for extra fibre, or add vinegar. Or eat them cold.
Portion sizes
125g of baked potato is about 100 calories.
Most people want to eat a lot more than this.
This may mean those wishing to lose weight may need to eat less of other things, or control their portion sizes of potatoes.
Depending on exercise levels, I usually recommend those wishing to lose weight limit starchy carbohydrates like potatoes to 1 serve a day.
Starchivore
I don’t recommend cutting starches out completely because this often backfires because humans are starch eaters – designed to eat starch; if we don’t get it regularly, we begin to crave it, setting us up for lack of self-control.
How do I know humans are starch-eaters primarily? Because the first digestive enzyme our food encounters in our mouths is amylase – the enzyme which digests starch. Our salivary glands, our pancreas and our small intestinal wall (in the ileum) all produce various starch-digesting enzymes. We are actually better suited to digesting starches than any other food.
Read more <here> to see how our design shows our food proclivity.
This man ate only boiled potatoes for a whole year – and he lost weight (almost 50kg), brought all his pathology markers to perfect levels, got over clinical depression, lost all his joint pain from multiple football injuries, overcame food addiction and felt fantastic.
For the readers’ interest, he never let potato eating curtail his social life, bringing his own potatoes to dinner parties and calling ahead to restaurants to ensure they could cook him potatoes!
Guidelines for weight and Type 2 diabetes:
- If weight is an issue, portion control is vital. Eating more calories than you burn always leads to weight gain, regardless of how healthy those calories are.
- If blood sugar is the issue, the cooking method is vital. But since Type 2 diabetes is almost always preceded by weight gain, see Tip #1.
My Potato Takeaway
Enjoy them, unfried, in moderation – unless you are exercising at a high-intensity level daily – in which case, there is less need for moderation.
They are a great tasting, high energy, nutritious food.
And PLEASE – limit those fries or chips once and for all!!!! They are the ultimate in body-damaging junk food.
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