THE POTATO REHEATED
Nutritional pseuds have slandered the potato for too long. Restate the spud’s good name with our chef’s guide
For years, whimsical diets and nutritional pseuds have tried to slander the nation’s favourite tuber as a fattening carb bomb and blood-sugar saboteur. But dig a little deeper and you’ll unearth a wealth of nourishing benefits, backed by real science. It’s time to restore the humble spud’s good name
If you want to pinpoint when the potato’s reputation went from healthful and sustaining vegetable to nutritional pariah, go back to 1981 and two physicians who invented something called the glycaemic index.
Also known as the GI, this system assigned a numeric value to foods based on the extent to which they affect your blood sugar levels. If a food has a high GI value, that food may spike these levels. For people suffering from diabetes, the spikes and the crashes that follow can be dangerous. For the rest of us, high-GI foods play havoc with our energy levels and may even lead to metabolic syndrome.
And so it was declared that high-glycaemic foods should be avoided: cornflakes, rice cakes, white bread and, of course, white potatoes. After all, a baked russet potato carries one of the highest glycaemic loads of all – greater than a Snickers bar. Spuds became the Devil’s food. Then, in 2011, a New England Journal
of Medicine study made the situation even worse by proclaiming: “Potato products (which are low in sugars and high in starches) showed the strongest associations with weight gain.” Potatoes, now dubbed a high-GI, high-starch food by the scientific community, became an easy target for low-carb, keto and paleo zealots looking to cut carbs for weight loss. Boiled, baked, hashed, smashed and especially deep-fried – spuds, they charged, will make your physique more couch potato than active man.
Except that nutritional science wasn’t settled at all, and what is now conventional wisdom doesn’t take into account recent discoveries – or even common sense. One medium-sized baked potato delivers 6g of protein and 4g of fibre, as well as significant amounts of bone-assisting calcium, heart-helping potassium and immunitysupporting vitamin C – all for just 265kcal. Potatoes are affordable and available everywhere; they will last for months if stored properly; and, as anyone who has ever enjoyed a scoop of buttery mash or gently cooked gnocchi knows, they are incredibly satisfying. As for the glycaemic index, well, experts now say that it has been misused and hasn’t always been applied appropriately. “We tend to eat potatoes as part of a mixed meal. So we might actually eat a potato with more fibre and fat, which decreases that spike in your blood sugar,” says Danielle Meyer, clinical director of the Dietetic Internship at the University at Buffalo.
What’s more, in 2018, when UK scientists looked at the totality of the research on potatoes, obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, they found that too many studies contradicted one another and lacked detail on cooking methods. In addition, many of the reports did not account for something rather important: satiety. “The potato can be a filling, nutrient-providing component to your meal,” says Mindy Haar, a fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. As far as starch goes, potatoes contain a beneficial kind – resistant starch – that your body can’t break down quickly into glucose as it does with, say, the starch in processed white bread. Resistant starch passes through the small intestine undigested and ferments in the large intestine, feeding the good bacteria in your gut. It functions like soluble fibre, helping you eat less over the course of the day.
All of which is good reason to start enjoying potatoes again, guilt-free. The intensely satisfying, nutrient-loaded recipes that follow will show you the many delectable ways to do just that.
IGNORE THE HATERS: RE-EMBRACE THE TATERS