Jane Harris

Are yellow-fleshed potatoes healthier than white? And what about the glycoalkaloid toxins? The high glycemic impact of potatoes may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, perhaps by chronically overstimulating the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. In my last two blogs, I explained how you can decrease the glycemic impact of white potatoes by eating them cold, chilling then reheating them, or adding broccoli, lemon juice, or vinegar. What else can we do? Well, the pigments in brightly colored berries can act as starch blockers, as you can see below and at 0:38 in my video The Healthiest Type of Potato . So, if you’re going to eat a high glycemic food, you may be able to moderate its impact by, for example, spreading raspberries on your toast, adding strawberries to your cornflakes, or sprinkling blueberries into your pancake batter. I’m not saying you have to put blackberries in your baked potato, but given that the natural color compounds in fruits can slow down starch di...

Broccoli, vinegar, and lemon juice are put to the test to blunt the glycemic index of white potatoes. White potatoes have a high glycemic index, and consumption of high glycemic impact foods may increase the risk of diabetes. Normally, after a meal, we’d like our blood sugars to rise and fall gently and naturally. But with high glycemic foods like potatoes, we get an exaggerated blood sugar spike. This leads our body to over-compensate with insulin, forcing our blood sugars lower than when we started, which results in negative metabolic consequences, such as a rise in triglyceride fats in the blood, as you can see below and at 0:34 in my video How to Reduce the Glycemic Impact of Potatoes . However, potatoes are a good source of vitamin C, potassium, and polyphenols, which may counterbalance their glycemic impact. This may explain why potatoes appear to have a neutral effect when it comes to lifespan, unlike other whole plant foods that have been associated with actively living ...

If you eat potatoes when they’re cold, as in potato salad, or chilled and reheated, you can get a nearly 40% lower glycemic impact. If you systematically pull together all the best studies on potato consumption and chronic disease risk, an association is found for the risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension—but that’s for French fries. Consumption of boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes was not associated with the risk of high blood pressure, but there was still a pesky link with diabetes. Overall, eating potatoes is not related to risk for many chronic diseases, but boiled potatoes could potentially pose a small increase in risk for diabetes. That’s one of the reasons some question whether they should be counted as vegetables when you’re trying to reach your recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables. If you look at other whole plant foods—nuts, vegetables, fruits, and legumes (which are beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils)—they’re associated with living a longer life...

NutritionFacts.org has a wide range of resources to help you on your journey to a healthier life. Primers Learn More Learn More Learn More   The How Not to Die Documentary In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the publication of How Not to Die , the Greenbaum Foundation commissioned a documentary about Dr. Greger’s life and work. The film also includes interviews with many of the leading luminaries in the evidence-based nutrition movement.   Daily Dozen Meal Planning Guide The healthiest diet is one that maximizes the intake of foods-as-grown—whole plant-based foods—and minimizes the consumption of processed and animal-based foods. In his New York Times Best Seller, How Not to Die , Dr. Greger covers the whys of eating healthfully, exploring diet’s role in the prevention, treatment, and sometimes even reversal of the fifteen leading causes of death in the United States, before diving into the hows of eating healthfully and sharing his Daily Do...

Do potato eaters live longer or shorter lives than non-potato eaters? Is there a link between potato intake and the incidence of hypertension? Harvard researchers followed the diets and diseases of more than 100,000 men and women for decades and found that those who ate potatoes on most days—not only French fries and potato chips, but even mashed, boiled, or baked—appeared to be at higher risk of developing high blood pressure. But what do people put on potatoes? Salt, not to mention butter, so might the potatoes just be innocent bystanders? The researchers made attempts to tease out the effects of salt and saturated fat, and there still seemed to be a link between potato consumption and high blood pressure. Maybe potato eaters are meat-and-potatoes people. After all, these same Harvard researchers found that meat, including poultry, seemed to be associated on its own with an increased risk of hypertension, and the same goes for even a moderate amount of canned tuna. So, in the po...

Does the link between white potatoes and diabetes extend to non-fried potatoes without butter or sour cream? The trouble for white potatoes began in 2006, when the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study, which had followed the diets and diseases of tens of thousands of women for 20 years, found that greater potato intake was associated with a greater likelihood of getting type 2 diabetes. However, of the hundred or so pounds of potatoes Americans eat every year, most are in the deep-fried forms of potato chips, french fries, or other processed products. What happened when they looked specifically at mashed or baked potatoes? They found the same link with diabetes. Okay, but what might potato eaters eat more of? Maybe I should rephrase that: What might meat-and-potatoes people eat more of? Indeed, people who ate more potatoes ate more meat, and we know that animal protein may be associated with increased diabetes risk. But the researchers tried to statistically adjust for that and still fou...