Spud consumption a hot potato

Pity the poor potato as it faces yet more abuse from detractors.

Eating potatoes that are as fresh as possible will mean you get maximum nutrients.

Pity the poor potato as it faces yet more abuse from detractors. In The New York Times recently, Eric Rimm, a professor of nutrition at Harvard, labelled them “starch bombs” and warned Americans that if they must eat french fries, they should consume no more than six at a time.

It is just the latest blow to the potato’s reputation. Last year a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that due to their high glycaemic index — an indicator of their ability to send blood sugar soaring — potatoes could raise our risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. A high consumption of chips, in particular, increased the risk of early death.

In 2016 pregnant women were advised not to eat too many potatoes because it could increase their risk of gestational diabetes; researchers at the US National Institutes of Health suggested women who ate one serving a week were 20 per cent more likely to develop the condition.

A 2009 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association involving 42,696 participants found that eating potatoes was associated with an increase in waist circumference in women. Pretty much anyone I know who is thin (or who wants to be) no longer touches them.

“We have really fallen out of love with the potato,” says Helen Bond, a spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association.

“Many, particularly millennial and Generation Z consumers, see spuds as stodge that will make them fat. To boot, they’re often a faff to prepare,” the British magazine The Grocer reported.

Such antipathy has contributed to a 40 per cent drop in fresh potato consumption in British homes across 20 years, according to AHDB Potatoes, while figures from the government’s waste advisory body, Wrap, suggest that nearly half of those bought by UK consumers are never used, with the equivalent of 5.8 million of them thrown away every day.

In the 1980s and 90s, when there seemed to be a branch of Spudulike on almost every main street, potatoes could do no wrong. They were favoured by marathon runners and athletes as a reliable source of energy and the France football team reportedly refuelled with them en route to winning the 1998 World Cup.

Some think the potato is much maligned. In a review of evidence published in the journal Nutrients, researchers from the University of Surrey have defended its nutritional status, saying they are “an important source of micronutrients, such as vitamin C, vitamin B6, potassium, folate and iron and contribute a significant amount of fibre to the diet”.

Tracey Robertson, one of the authors, and her colleagues point out that a medium-sized baked potato weighing 200g can contain almost half of a man’s recommended daily intake of vitamin C and vitamin B6, just under a third of potassium needs and about a quarter of the requirement for folate, iron and magnesium. And, they say, potatoes may even be the dieter’s ally since they “have been reported to be more satiating than other starchy carbohydrates, such as pasta and rice, which may aid weight maintenance”.

A lot depends on how you eat them, of course. “Peeling, cutting and deep-frying potatoes as you do with chips is not the best way to eat them,” Bond says, but adding any form of protein or fat to potatoes — milk, cream or cheese or oil, for example — will lower their GI. “Eating a diet that is high in fibre, including plenty of pulses and other vegetables, will also counteract the effects of any blood sugar spike from potatoes,” Bond adds.

A recent study from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, showed that swapping half a portion of potatoes for lentils resulted in a 35 per cent drop in blood sugar levels after a meal. You also should wait until a potato cools before eating it. “When a potato is cool or cold its structure changes,” Robertson says. “Some of the starch it contains goes through a process that turns it into resistant starch, a type that isn’t digested in the small intestine, but travels into the large bowel, where it is digested by the gut bacteria.”

Resistant starch is considered beneficial because it doesn’t cause a temporary spike in blood sugar that follows the consumption of other carbohydrate foods. “It also acts as a prebiotic, helping to maintain a healthy gut flora and digestion,” Bond says. “Serving cold new potatoes in a vinaigrette dressing is a good idea as the acid in the vinegar helps to prevent a blood sugar surge.”

What about the green bits you can get on potatoes? “I wouldn’t eat them,” Robertson says. “It is a toxin and if you ate a lot of it, it might irritate your gut. Same with sprouted potatoes, although the reason they have sprouts is because they have been stored for a long time in less than ideal conditions, so they’ll have also lost nutrients.”

Eating potatoes that are as fresh as possible will mean you get maximum nutrients. In one study carried out in Sweden, storing potatoes for five months, as many will have been by the time you buy them, resulted in a 60 per cent decrease in vitamin C, although counterintuitively it did lead to a 20 per cent increase in vitamin B6.

Bond says spuds should not be eliminated from our diets. It’s even possible to eat them and lose weight, she says, although the potato-only diet adopted as a trial by Andrew Taylor, a 36-year-old Australian, in 2016 is not recommended (he did reportedly lose 10kg in a month). “It’s about eating sensible amounts of them and in the right way,” Bond says.

“By all means, have some potato a few times a week, just not as chips. It should not be something we seek to avoid. I am a fan and eat them regularly. They are comforting, filling and delicious.”

The Times