Nutritionally Speaking: Potatoes Are Not Fattening

Dear Dr. Meinig: Not too long ago you mentioned that we should stay away from French-fried potatoes. Our kids just love them so much it is hard to believe we should discourage them. Aren’t potatoes a good food? It’s a staple food for the Irish. – R.A.

 

Dear R.A.: The Irish call potatoes “bog apples” and although McDonald’s Hamburger Restaurants these days are located in countries all over the world, I doubt they call them bog-apple French-fried in Ireland.

When the Spanish explorers, sailing up the Pacific side of South America, landed in the area of the Andes, the natives introduced them to a number of new foods. The adventurers found a tuber they were cultivating to be delicious and nourishing. There isn’t anything in the history books about who introduced potatoes to Europe. However, records indicate they were known in Spain about 1570 and in England before 1590. Early plantings in Europe were grown more as a curiosity than as a food. Potatoes were introduced into the North American colonies from Bermuda in 1621.

The Spanish adventurers dreamed of discovering wealth in gold and silver. How strange it would be for them if they now could see how these insignificant tubers have proved a greater boon to the world than all the precious metals they found in their dangerous voyage explorations.

It wasn’t too long before potatoes were grown widely over the world. They do better in colder zones, so cultivation in Europe and Russia became extensive, playing an important part in the history of these areas.

The potato is three-fourths water. The remaining 15 percent is starch, 1 percent to 2 percent protein, and 2 percent to 3 percent is minerals. Most of the protein is located in the layer just under the skin. It is lost or wasted by heavy peeling. This is the reason you have heard nutritionists advise it is better to eat the skin than the inside. Potatoes contain very little fat or sugar and are high in potassium, phosphorus and calcium.

There are many excellent ways of preparing potatoes. In recent years, eating them has become much maligned. Most of this loss in popularity has been the mistaken notion that they are fattening. Pound for pound, other than when they are prepared as French fries, they have one-third fewer calories and more nutrients than the average grain products used in their place. A three-and-a-half ounce potato, depending on the kind, contains only 61 to 87 calories, while the same amount of cottage cheese often chosen in its place as being less fattening, contains 106 calories. However, do choose cottage cheese instead of French-fries.

I am appalled at the overweight people I observe in restaurants who leave most of their baked potato, but manage to gobble down two or three rolls or slices of bread. These contain 140 to 250 calories, compared to the potato’s 61 to 87. The amount of butter used on each is relatively the same. Another restaurant observation of overweight people is the frequency with which they leave most of their salad in order to have room for the 256-calorie apple pie–if a la mode, another 269 calories.

There are several reasons that account for French-fries being considered abominable. Number one is the animal or vegetable oil used during cooking. The continual heating of the fat causes it to become more and more saturated. Most people today are aware that saturated oils are a main factor in the cause of heart attacks. In addition, the continual overheating of the oil breaks it down into ever-increasing amounts of toxic substances and carcinogens. Another detrimental factor is the number of calories they contain. French-fries soak up a goodly amount of the cooking fat. If you eat the same amount as a three-and-a-half ounce baked potato, for example, the French-fry calorie intake would be 323 compared to the “tator’s” 61 to 87, or a little over 100 calories after adding a teaspoon of butter, sour cream, or yogurt.

Most French-fries are prepared in a potato factory. To keep them from spoiling, their enzymes are killed by partly frying the potatoes in oil. They then are frozen or treated to extend shelf life. Eventually they find their way into the restaurant and the oil vat, and are cooked again. Each heating destroys food value. The original amount of vitamin C in a fresh potato varies from 5 to 50 mg. After the double heating, the amount of vitamin C remaining would be too little to be significant.

Potato chips suffer the same indignities as do Fritos, corn chips, tortilla chips, and similar snacks. The popular Ta-tos chips are brine-soaked in a salt solution to make them hard and crispy. The brine solution adds so much salt that company managers were afraid the chips might corrode the machinery used to make them. An engineering study gave the equipment a clean bill of health which is more than can be said for the people eating them. One ounce of Lay’s potato chips contain 153 calories and 633 milligrams of sodium. The amount of salt absorbed in Ta-tos is probably a good deal higher.

Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of Pepsi Company, Inc., takes in $2 billion a year on snack sales, topping its rivals Nabisco and Borden. It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the manufacturing shenanigans necessary to prepare such snacks and the undesirable influence these products have on body chemistry. In order to keep the frying oil from becoming rancid, preservatives must be used to keep oxygen away from the oil. Another method is to cover the surface with a layer of nitrogen gas.

The menu choices in many restaurants today are composed mostly of foods that are deep fat fried. Whether the food be chicken, fish, potatoes, seafood,or vegetables, the same unfortunate absorption of harmful fat occurs. The dangers to one’s health is hardly worth the risks. Even so, getting adults to recognize these products as junk food is almost as difficult as conveying the message to children. Parents only become efficient in getting these views across to their children when they, themselves, are willing to accept and personally stop eating these destructive foods. Love finds a way.