If you eat potatoes when they are cold, as in potato salad, or frozen and heated, you can have almost a 40% lower glycemic impact.
If you systematically aggregate all the best studies on potato consumption and chronic disease risk, one correlation is I establish about the risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure—but that’s about French fries. Eating boiled, baked or mashed potatoes was not which are related with the risk of high blood pressure, but there was still a troubling association with diabetes. Overall, potato consumption is not associated with risk for many chronic diseases, but boiled potatoes could potentially create a small increase in diabetes risk. This is one of the reasons some question whether they should count as vegetables when trying to reach your recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables.
If you look at other whole plant foods—nuts, vegetables, fruits, and legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils)—they’re linked to longer lifespans. Significantly lower risk of death from cancer, death from cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks, and 25% less chance of premature death from all causes combined. But there is no such protection from potatoes for cancer, heart disease or general mortality. So the fact that potatoes don’t seem to affect mortality can be seen as a negative. Now, it’s not like meat, which can actively reduce your life, as you can see below and at 1:28 in my video Glycemic index of potatoes: Why you should refrigerate and reheat them.
But there may be an opportunity cost eating white potatoes, since every bite of potato is a missed opportunity to put something even healthier in your mouth—something that can actively make you live longer.
Well, potatoes hectare kind of “double edged knife”. The reason that eating potatoes can have just a neutral effect on mortality risk is that all the fiber, vitamin C, and potassium in white potatoes may offset the negative effects of their high glycemic index. Not only are high glycemic impact diets “robust which are relatedwith the development of type 2 diabetes, but current evidence suggests that this relationship is cause and effect.
A front group for the potato industry called the Potato Research and Education Alliance is funded a study found that eating non-fried chips did not affect blood sugar indicators, compared to the likes of Wonder Bread, so that doesn’t really mean much. Foods with a glycemic index (GI) greater than 70 are classified as high glycemic index foods (high glycemic index foods), and those below 55 are low glycemic index foods. Pure sugar water, for example, is often standardized at 100, and white bread and white potatoes are also very high as high-glycemic foods. But when you compare them to an intact grain like barley groats (aka potted barley), which is an extremely low GI food, you can see how refined grains and potatoes just don’t match. See the numbers below or at 2:47 in mine video.
Is there some way to have our potatoes and eat them too, lowering their glycemic index somewhat? Well, if you boiling potatoes and then put them in the fridge to cool, a little of the starch crystallizes in a form that can no longer be broken down by the starch-chewing enzymes in your gut, as you can see below and at 3:06 in my video.
However, the amounts of this so-called resistant starch that are was formed they are relatively small, making it difficult to recommend cold fries as a solution. But when put to the test, actually see a dramatic drop in glycemic index in cold and hot fries, as seen below and at 3:23 video.
Thus, from consuming Potatoes as a potato salad, for example, you can have almost 40% lower glycemic impact. Therefore, the cooling effect can also slow down the rate at which starch is broken down and absorbed. So people looking to minimize their dietary glycemic index can consider pre-cooking the potatoes and refrigerating or reheating them. Its downside eating The thing about cold potatoes is that they may not be as filling as eating hot potatoes. But you can get the best of both worlds by first cooling them and then reheating them, which is exactly what happened in that famous study I described in my book How not to diet. The single most satisfying food of the dozens tried was the boiled-then-cooled-then-reheated potatoes, as you can see below and at 4:09 in my video.
There it is actually an appetite-suppressing protein in potatoes called potato protease inhibitor II, but in the way prepare your potatoes make the difference. Both boiled and mashed potatoes are much more filling than French fries, as shown below and at 4:26 in my video.
That it was for fries though. What about oven fries? Peoples had a big drop in appetite after eating boiled mash, compared to white rice or white pasta, which is exactly where french fries were stuck, as well as baked fries. So, while french fries may be your BFF, they’re not very filling.
Doctor’s note
Just to be clear, you don’t need to reheat. Refrigeration is the critical step in dramatically lowering the glycemic index, so you can definitely enjoy a cold potato salad. But if you’re trying to control your weight, you might want to avoid even French fries.
This is the third in a series of five potato themed videos. If you missed the first two, check it out Do potatoes increase the risk of diabetes? and Do potatoes increase the risk of high blood pressure and death?.
Refrigeration isn’t the only trick to softening the glycemic impact. You can also add vinegar, lemon or broccoli.
Stay tuned for the last two videos in this series: How to reduce the glycemic effect of potatoes and The healthiest kind of potato.
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