Althouse: Anti-potato research.

June 23, 2011

Anti-potato research.

"Eating more potato chips and French fries is likely to lead to a bigger weight gain over the years than the weight change associated with eating more of other foods, new research indicates."

53 comments:

Fen said...: Please tell me our tax dollars didn't pay for this.; 6/23/11, 8:13 AM
ndspinelli said...: One of my pet peeves is when you order in a fast food restaurant they're constantly trying to sell you fries or chips. Maybe we should all scream "MURDERERS" when they ask if we want the combo.; 6/23/11, 8:15 AM
Shanna said...: Potato chips are bad for you? Who knew?; 6/23/11, 8:20 AM
GMay said...: Damn potatophobes.; 6/23/11, 8:21 AM
AllenS said...: Tags: No shit; 6/23/11, 8:22 AM
Curious George said...: If french fries are wrong then I don't want to be right.; 6/23/11, 8:25 AM
Sal said...: Sad but true.; 6/23/11, 8:25 AM
MadisonMan said...: That's why I eat potatoes raw.; 6/23/11, 8:31 AM
pauls lane said...: Whew! I hardly touch chips or fries. Glad these scientists haven't targeted ice cream yet.

Also the conclusion says we should all eat a healthier diet and quit watching so much TV and maybe perhaps get up off our collective asses once in awhile. I think I've heard that somewhere before, like maybe 20 or 30 years ago.; 6/23/11, 8:33 AM
bandmeeting said...: Read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. It has everything you need to know about why people are getting fat.; 6/23/11, 8:38 AM
pauls lane said...: How long before San Fran bans chips and fries? We need to set up a pool.; 6/23/11, 8:39 AM
kjbe said...: If french fries are wrong then I don't want to be right.

Amen, to that!; 6/23/11, 8:40 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: Howse about "anti-GREASE" rather than anti-spud. Potatoes themselves are a remarkably nourishing and health-giving food.

About 20 years ago we had three Bolivian farmers who spent six weeks on our farm. Three of them, four of us, all trim and strong. During the six weeks the six of us ate over 700 pounds of potatoes because I was cooking in a very Bolivian style.

On their final night at the farm I asked them what had impressed them the most about their stay. Their response actually shocked me -- "How few potatoes you eat in this country."

We had consumed over a kilo of spuds per person, per day for a month and a half ... and they perceived it as "few potatoes."

Oh, and we were never bored with the variety and never once used grease to cook them.; 6/23/11, 8:40 AM
Rockport Conservative said...: Potatoes are poison for diabetics. Pure sugar doesn't send my blood sugar spiraling up like potatoes do. Granted bread, sugar and many other things can do it too, potatoes are the king of blood sugar peaks.; 6/23/11, 8:41 AM
MadisonMan said...: Oh, and we were never bored with the variety and never once used grease to cook them.

Well, this just begs the question: What were the best recipes?; 6/23/11, 8:42 AM
pauls lane said...: I think the Irish taught us all a lesson on using potatoes as the primary food source.; 6/23/11, 8:49 AM
rhhardin said...: Whatever happened to Fresh Horizons bread, made from wood pulp.; 6/23/11, 8:49 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Potatoes are poison for diabetics. Pure sugar doesn't send my blood sugar spiraling up like potatoes do.

True story. Since my husband was diagnosed about 10 years ago, we hardly ever eat potatoes. When we do, on special occasions like Thanksgiving, or when he cheats and has fries for lunch, the effect is dramatic. We now use Yams (the bright orange ones mislabeled sweet potatoes).

Now that a bag of potato chips is $4.00, the temptation to snack is much less.; 6/23/11, 8:58 AM
virgil xenophon said...: I'm with Fen. And we need a multi-million dollar study to prove the intuitively obvious? It's like spending money on studies to determine if people have enough sense to come out of the rain if caught w.o. an umbrella.; 6/23/11, 9:06 AM
ndspinelli said...: Pauls Lane, The Irish taught us to use whiskey as the major food group. The potatoes are just bland starchy food so you don't vomit the good whiskey. I'm half Irish so I can say this w/ impunity.; 6/23/11, 9:09 AM
gemma said...: If you eat the same calories of anything and never move how can one food be more fattening than another....are potatoes a gateway food like marijuana is a gateway drug? Tell me please ObiWan!; 6/23/11, 9:15 AM
al said...: Switch to baked fries rather than deep fried. Great flavor and you lose most of the fat.; 6/23/11, 9:17 AM
Dan in Philly said...: Ummmm, anyone with half a brain will tell you this. I eat 4 ounces of potato chips and gain about 2 pounds, which proves the potato is immune to the first law of thermodynamics...; 6/23/11, 9:19 AM
Tibore said...: "About 20 years ago we had three Bolivian farmers who spent six weeks on our farm. Three of them, four of us, all trim and strong. During the six weeks the six of us ate over 700 pounds of potatoes because I was cooking in a very Bolivian style."

Yeah, but there's a great difference between a physical laborer eating a high quantity of starch and a relatively more sedentary office worker type eating even just a portion of that. Someone who's job requires physical exertion for a great portion of the day will not suffer the same ill effects from high consumption of carbs than someone who at best gets a couple of hours per day of exercise. One will benefit from the nicely dense amount of energy a spud can give, and the other will get fat and incur health risks because they don't use up the calories that much starch gives in one setting.

Now no, I'm not saying that potatoes are bad. Not in the least bit (not when I consume as many as I do, even as a diabetic). What I'm saying is that if a person has a less exerting lifestyle, then he/she had better watch their starch intake. Potatoes aren't bad period, but that consumption's got to be measured in the context of a person's lifestyle. An Iowa State/Middlesex University/Wageingen University study of Russian obesity noted a pretty strong uptick of weight gain coinciding with an upward trend (160%, according to the linked paper) of potato consumption at the same time there was a decrease of consumption of other food classes and as well as a "decline in physical expenditure of calories both at the work place and at home". So while potato consumption is not solely at fault there, dramatically increased consumption of a starchy food in conjunction with less exercise is a killer.

Potatoes are good - great tasting, in fact, and I looooove the hell out of them (as a side note, I'm jealous of that anecdote... a few weeks of wonderful, tastey, unique spuds consumption!) - but a person has to exercise them off. You don't see anyone getting fat off of equivalent mass consumption of broccoli or lettuce, but you do see such gains in anything carb-ey, starchy, or fatty. Which is why they're a food that ends up having a potential health price tag. Exercise it off and you're fine. Forget to do so, and the impact of excess potato consumption will be far more obvious than, say, excess celery or cabbage intake. You don't gain much if any weight from eating too much fiberous stuff.; 6/23/11, 9:22 AM
Fred4Pres said...: Assuming that is even true, the key is potato chips and french fries.

It is not the humble potato that is the issue, it is frying a starchy tuber in fat. Substitute taro and you will be a fat Hawaiian or Samoan.; 6/23/11, 9:24 AM
traditionalguy said...: Chips and fries are sold to supply our salt craving. That is why you cannot just eat one, The human body is salting away its needed sodium chloride for the next hunting trip. As a former salt addict, I can now easily say "give me cole slaw in place of the fries". But it is not easy to love a salt limited diet.; 6/23/11, 9:26 AM
pauls lane said...: @tibore right..but I wonder what the life span of a person would be that uses lettuce as their primary food source?; 6/23/11, 9:26 AM
ErnieG said...: "Pauls Lane, The Irish taught us to use whiskey as the major food group."
That's why Irish coffee is the perfect food. It has all four of the major food groups:
*Whiskey
*Sugar
*Caffeine
*Butterfat; 6/23/11, 9:38 AM
rhhardin said...: "Packing on pounds? Try the new Harvard diet. We'll that for you coming up...

You eat only valedictorians?"

Armstrong and Getty takes a guess.; 6/23/11, 9:42 AM
Anonymous said...: People who pay attention to 'nutrition research' either haven't lived through the last several decades of reversals in the 'accepted facts' or have and deserve to live a life of soured bean curd.; 6/23/11, 10:07 AM
William said...: If watching television is fattening, what about blogging? Are blogs with high ire content less fattening? Are blogs about cooking or cute puppies more fattening? Further research needs to be done in this area. Perhaps further study will show that heaping invective on Sarah Palin has cardio as well as weight loss benefits. There's a federal grant here somewhere.; 6/23/11, 10:08 AM
bandmeeting said...: Switch to baked fries rather than deep fried. Great flavor and you lose most of the fat.

You'd do better to eat a cup of lard than the potatoes, fried baked pulped or any other way you want to prepare them.; 6/23/11, 10:11 AM
erictrimmer said...: The article and accompanying video were anti-potato propaganda, not news. Shameful.

I haven't read the study itself, so I can't say for certain, but it sure seems like "anti-potato research" to me.

I am every day more convinced that newspapers are written for stupid people. No offence to any of you here who read newspapers. If you're skeptical, you're not the target audience.; 6/23/11, 10:15 AM
edutcher said...: Anybody ever tell these morons about moderation?

Oh, that's right. Lefties don't believe in moderation; you're supposed to glut yourself into a condition where your life is a wreck and then Reichsfuhrer Sibelius bans whatever it was that got you there and then wants you to live on government programs the rest of your life.

pauls lane said...

I think the Irish taught us all a lesson on using potatoes as the primary food source.

Any crop can fail. Wheat rust, corn blight, take your pick.

Potatoes are fine. But you don't want a bunch of Protestants telling you how to grow them.; 6/23/11, 10:17 AM
erictrimmer said...: "Real human beings, with interests and will, are trying to manipulate the minds of other human beings, who also have interests and will."; 6/23/11, 10:19 AM
Geoff Matthews said...: Scientists discover fried foods lead to weight gain.
Also, sun rises in the east.; 6/23/11, 10:30 AM
Carol_Herman said...: How come eating pussy doesn't change a man's weight in any direction at all?

This "research" is based on the idea that our government funds the research to add more regulations. And, hence, improve the employment outlook.

While left unsaid, we have fatter poor people in ths country than anywhere else on earth.

And, you can collect foodstamps, while your kids go to school with their own cell phones.

What does the government actually get to change, here?

It's like the lightbulbs. When people fear the government will regulate something they want to buy, they horde.

Horde's just another word for weight gain.; 6/23/11, 10:32 AM
gerry said...: I'm relieved to be an old fart.

I've made is this far, so from here on out it's all gravy.

Moreover, this government is transferring the income of America's youth to OLD FARTS LIKE ME.

Pass the potatoes!

WV: floctato

Pass the floctatoes!; 6/23/11, 10:34 AM
Tibore said...: pauls lane said...
@tibore right..but I wonder what the life span of a person would be that uses lettuce as their primary food source?

If it were me, pretty damn short. I would've shot myself a long time ago if all I had to eat was lettuce...; 6/23/11, 10:38 AM
CachorroQuente said...: Eating more potatoes is associated with a gain of 1.28 pounds over four years. At 3500 calories/pound, that comes out to about 3 calories per day.

Oh, that's 3.07 calories per day, if we use the same ridiculous precision used in the article. (how in Hell do you measure somebody's weight to within .01 pound?)

3 calories/day - that's like one teaspoon of sugar/week.

This is bullshit.

They should change the headline: "sagging waistlines draw attention to 3.07 calorie per day overconsumption of potatoes."; 6/23/11, 10:41 AM
edutcher said...: Carol_Herman said...

How come eating pussy doesn't change a man's weight in any direction at all?

It's offset by the energy expended doing it.

Sort of like the principle that broken cookies don't contain calories because the calories leak out of the breaks.; 6/23/11, 10:49 AM
Anonymous said...: One of these days, Michelle O is going to come up hard against the evidence that carbs like pasta, bread, and potatoes are bad for diabetics and dieters.

The crony capitalist food industry will not be happy.; 6/23/11, 10:52 AM
Kirby Olson said...: It didn't say that potatoes themselves were bad, just that fried potatoes were bad, and that all the goo they put on chips is bad. Potatoes by themselves make you feel fairly full (that's important!) and offer a pretty wide array of important vitamins and minerals. Potatoes by themselves will keep you alive and they don't have many calories. The potato was discovered in the Incan civilization and it was only then that it made its way to Europe. At first the Europeans weren't pleased but slowly whole countries came to lean on it. The Irish, of course, but also the Finns and many others use potatoes as a huge part of their diet. Irish people and Finns aren't that fat. But they don't eat potato chips or fries as we do. It's what we do to the potatoes, not the potatoes themselves. Please don't blame potatoes. I think I once read there are over 500 varieties of potato but we tend to use only three or four. I like sweet potatoes, too. If you eat a large sweet potato with just a tad of butter you can feel full. How many calories are we talking? Naturally if you go to Popeye's and have it turned into some kind of cake you're talking thousands of calories. But we have to stay out of those places and do our jumping jacks!; 6/23/11, 10:55 AM
Tibore said...: "edutcher said...
Anybody ever tell these morons about moderation?"

Yeah, this. I still eat potatoes and other carbs as a diabetic - hell, even cookies and sugar - but I won't overeat them, and as my doctor, the diabetes center nurses, the therapists those nurses brought to lectures, etc. all said: Exercise off what you eat!

No, it's not easy. Especially when friends start talking about going out for pizza, or something fried. But it works.

"They should change the headline: "sagging waistlines draw attention to 3.07 calorie per day overconsumption of potatoes."

Yeah, this too. What's harmful isn't the food all by itself, it's the food in conjunction with lifestyle, including exercise or the lack thereof. Someone can be eating half of what I do and as a percentage far less starches, sugars, etc. too, but if the most they move is 50 feet a day, they're going to have problems. Whereas a guy can be eating 4 times the carbs and stuff I do, have no problem at putting away an entire 14" pizza or box of fried chicken, etc., but if they're a manual laborer who's cumulatively slinging several hundred pounds a day, or being forced to walk miles every shift, they're going to be far more fit.

It's the total package, not any one thing. Even you overload on that one thing; you screw yourself because you're not compensating in some manner.; 6/23/11, 10:58 AM
Patrick said...: The Potato is dead. Long live the Potato.; 6/23/11, 11:00 AM
Glenn Howes said...: One "good" thing about the ridiculous war on dietary fat is that french fries from fast food places are no longer cooked in delicious beef tallow, but rather in cruelly neutral canola oil. Thus I never have any impulse to carb up on french fries.; 6/23/11, 11:01 AM
edutcher said...: Tibore, I have GERD, so I'm in the same boat, sort of.

Nothing much after 8 and go easy after supper.; 6/23/11, 11:02 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: MadMan --

Our favourite was Mot''he (Quechua word) consisting of boiled potatoes, boiled fresh faba beans and a fiery aji pepper sauce known as Laxh'uah

A very close second was boiled potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce -- Andean spicing, not Italian, though I did it Italian style a few times at the end and the Bolivians were quite fond of it.

Another was boiled potatoes, and at the end add shredded cabbage, a bit of spicy lamb sausage and a light dash of tomato sauce.

I also did a lot of a potato soup called Locro; as well as a spicy potato-quinoa soup with shredded cabbage and bits of chicken (substitute for guinea pig) and a potato-cabbage-mutton stew.

Breakfast was often a plate of steaming spuds and a hot red sauce a lot like the Mexican 'Cholula'.

+++++

Tibore --

A kilo of boiled potatoes provides 780 Calories, or only one third of the daily caloric requirement for a fairly sedentary person.

That same kilo of boiled potatoes also provides the following percent of daily requirements:

90% Vitamin C
60% Niacin
120% Vitamin B6

40% Calcium
340% Iron
80% Magnesium
30% Zinc
440% Copper (very good for male plumbing)
670% Manganese

All for 780 Calories. The spuds aren't the problem.; 6/23/11, 11:24 AM
Hagar said...: Several commenters above,

Glibberals do not like to hear about moderation, which implies using some measure of self-control.
It has to be the fault of something specific and external to themselves, so that it can be subjected to government regulation.; 6/23/11, 11:25 AM
pauls lane said...: Ok enough about potatoes. Let us discuss how bad the egg is, or used to be, or will be again.; 6/23/11, 11:37 AM
Milwaukee said...: Search for "Chris Voigt" and potato in your favorite Internet web-browser. To protest potatoes being restricted from WIC purchases, he ate nothing but potatoes for 60 days, lost 21 pounds and had his cholesterol drop 67 points. He did use small amounts of salt, pepper and olive oil with his potatoes. Potatoes have gotten a bad reputation from people putting dollops of butter and sour cream on them. Potato chips are clearly delivery systems for fat and salt, but potatoes don't have to be unhealthy. Clearly, a person with diabetes is not healthy, and their reaction to potatoes would be different than a healthy persons. Apple based vinegar has been shown to blunt the harsh effect of potatoes on the insulin levels. Too many potatoes too fast gives me the hiccups.

I suspect this is from thin- and want-to-be-thin women who are more than happy to project their diet and weight problems on the rest of us.

There was another guy, Mark Haub, who only ate what could be bought at a convenience store. Some fresh apples and bananas, but for the most part things like Hostess Twinkees and Cherry Pies. However, he strictly limited his diet to 1500 calories, with something eaten every 3 hours. He lost 27 pounds in 10 weeks.; 6/23/11, 11:38 AM
gerry said...: Carol, I wonder how fattening this is?; 6/23/11, 12:52 PM
ampersand said...: Carol,
If Hannibal Lector offers to eat your pussy,hide the fava beans and as an extra precaution, hide the cat.; 6/23/11, 8:29 PM