For several years the potato was considered a food to be discarded in a diet aimed at safeguarding health, replacing it with other vegetables considered healthier. Indeed, the research literature has previously indicated that potatoes may have a detrimental effect on health, such as possibly increasing the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.
However, new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has shown that while the potato may not have all the same benefits as some other vegetables, such as reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, the health problems associated with it could actually be due to how people cook it and what they eat it with.
The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Diabetes Care.
Potato: that’s why it was re-evaluated
During the Danish Long-Term Diet, Cancer and Health Study, more than 54,000 people reported their dietary intake. A recent analysis of this study led by Dr. Nicola Bondonno of ECU’s Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute, found that people who ate the most vegetables were 21% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who they ate fewer vegetables.
Pratik Pokharel did some work on the analysis and said that while potatoes didn’t have the same impact on type 2 diabetes, they also didn’t have any negative effects: “In previous studies, potato has been positively linked to the incidence of diabetes, regardless of how it was prepared, but we found that is not true,” said the researcher.
“In Denmark, people consume potatoes prepared in many different ways; in our study, we were able to distinguish between the different preparation methods. When we separated the boiled potatoes from the mashed potatoes, french fries or crisps, the boiled potatoes were no longer associated with a higher risk of diabetes: they had zero effect.”
Pokharel said the underlying dietary patterns were key: ‘In our study, people who ate more potatoes also consumed more butter, red meat and soft drinks, foods known to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. of that, boiled potato is no longer associated with diabetes. It’s just french fries and mashed potatoes, the latter probably because it’s usually made with butter and cream and the like.”
Pokharel also said the study findings indicate that vegetables could play a key role in reducing type 2 diabetes, as people who ate lots of leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower had a higher risk significantly less than developing the condition.
The scholar He added that the relationship between vegetables and diabetes should be incorporated into public dietary guidelines, as well as the benefits of eating potatoes: “The finding that vegetables reduce the risk of diabetes is crucial for public and non-public health recommendations we should ignore it. As for the potato, we cannot say that it has a benefit in terms of type 2 diabetes, but neither is it harmful if prepared in a healthy way”.
“We should separate the potato and other vegetables when it comes to disease prevention messages, but replacing refined grains like white rice and pasta with potatoes can improve the quality of your diet thanks to the fiber and other nutrients found in potatoes”.
Mr Pokharel added that people should be advised to increase their consumption of vegetables and could include the potato, provided they leave out some of the unhealthy extras such as butter, cream and oil.
“Potatoes have fiber and nutrients, which are good for you,” she explained: “People say carbs aren’t healthy, but it’s more about the type of carbs you’re getting; compared to something like white rice, boiled potato has good carbohydrate quality. But just be careful how you prepare it: Don’t eat french fries or buttery-rich mashed potatoes. You just boil them and eat them like other vegetables or other foods, and you don’t need to pair them often with red meat.”
When we think of healthy vegetables, we don’t think of the potato, but we should. Potatoes have developed a reputation for causing weight gain and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and are often found on a list of foods to avoid, especially for people with insulin resistance.
A new study however, from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, published in the Journal of Medicinal Foods says potatoes didn’t actually increase that risk, are packed with key nutrients, and packed with health benefits.
Candida Rebello, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Pennington Biomedical, was a co-investigator on the study that examined how a diet that includes potatoes affects key health measures. Rebello, who is also a registered dietitian, said: ‘We have shown that, contrary to common belief, potatoes do not have a negative impact on blood glucose levels. In fact, the people who participated in our study lost weight.”
“People tend to eat the same weight of food regardless of calorie content to feel full,” Rebello explained.
“By eating heavier weight foods that are lower in calories, you can easily reduce the number of calories you consume. The key aspect of our study is that we did not reduce the portions of the meals but we lowered their calorie content by including the potato: “Each participant’s meal was tailored to their personalized calorie needs, but by replacing some of the meat content with potatoes, participants found themselves fuller, faster, and often didn’t even finish their meal. In fact, you can lose weight with little effort.”
The study involved 36 participants aged 18 to 60 who were overweight, had obesity or had insulin resistance. Insulin resistance refers to a health condition in which the body’s cells do not respond well to insulin and glucose does not enter the cells for energy. Insulin resistance is linked to obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes.
Participants were fed precisely controlled diets of widely available common foods including beans, peas and meat or fish, or white potato with meat or fish. Both diets were high in fruits and vegetables and replaced about 40 percent of typical meat intake with beans and peas or potatoes. Previous studies have shown that eating beans and peas improves blood glucose levels in people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes.
To increase the dietary fiber component of the potato, it was boiled with the skin intact and then refrigerated for between 12 and 24 hours. Potatoes have been incorporated into lunch and dinner main entrees, such as shepherd’s pie and creamy shrimp and potatoes, and served alongside side dishes such as mashed potatoes, baked potato wedges, potato salad, and scalloped potatoes with appetizers for lunch and dinner.
We have prepared the potato in a way that maximizes their fiber content. When we compared a potato diet to a beans and peas diet, we found that they were equal in terms of health benefits,” Rebello said.
“People generally don’t stick to a diet they don’t like or that isn’t varied enough. Meal plans have provided a variety of dishes and we have shown that a healthy eating plan can have various options for people who are striving to eat healthy. In addition, potatoes are a fairly inexpensive vegetable to incorporate into a diet,” continued the expert.
Pennington Biomedical Research Center executive director John Kirwan, Ph.D., and principal investigator of the study, said, “Obesity is an incredibly complex disease that Pennington Biomedical is addressing on three different fronts: research examining how and why our bodies react to the way they do, research examining individual responses to diet and physical activity, and discussions at the policy level and community programs that lead our research into strategies our local and global communities can use to live a healthier life”.
“This new data on the potato’s impact on our metabolism is an exciting addition to the arsenal of evidence we have for doing just that.”
In Italy, according to the Ministry of Health: “Italians with type 2 diabetes are about 6% of the population, that is almost 4 million people. It is estimated, however, that this number may be joined by an estimated 1.5 million people who have the disease but do not yet know it. The prevalence increases with age up to a value of 21% in people aged 75 or over (ISTAT 2020 data).
“The disease generally occurs in adulthood (about 2/3 of cases of diabetes affect people over 64), although in recent years, an increasing number of cases have been diagnosed in adolescence, a fact which can also be correlated to increase in childhood obesity. In 2021 theInternational Diabetes Federation (IDF) has calculated that over 530 million people in the world between the ages of 20 and 79 are diabetic”.
“Type 2 diabetes mellitus, also called adult-onset diabetes, accounts for 90% of diabetes cases. It is a chronic noncommunicable disease characterized by high blood glucose levels and is due to an alteration in the amount or functioning of insulin. It is called type 2 to differentiate it from type 1 (also called juvenile diabetes, 10% of cases), as they are two distinct pathologies, due to causes, age of onset, onset symptoms, therapy and possibility of prevention “.
Type 2 diabetes is strongly related to overweight and obesity, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and disadvantaged socio-economic conditions and is therefore, in part, preventable through interventions on the living environment and actions that favor changes in people’s lifestyles at risk, especially as regards nutrition and physical activity”.
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