Are White Potatoes Healthy?
Are white potatoes healthy? In short, yes!
In order to see whether white potatoes are healthy it’s helpful to go through our 5 rules for determining nutritious foods.
1. Are white potatoes nutritious? Yes they are, and they’re as nutritious if not more so than sweet potatoes.
2. Are white potatoes good for blood sugar? It depends. It’s highly individual. Some individuals get more of a blood sugar spike from sweet potatoes while others get more of one from white potatoes. For more details on the individual nature of blood sugar spikes check out my video on that subject here:
Can rice spike your blood sugar more than a cookie?
Post-workout for healthy people white potatoes can be great. Furthermore, white potatoes contain a compound called resistance starch which can help with blood sugar, which sweet potatoes do not contain.
3. Are white potatoes addictive? It depends. They can be if they’re French Fries or chips, but roasted potatoes with olive oil aren’t really addictive.
4. Do white potatoes promote healthy digestion? They can, it depends on the person. But they’re no more or less harmful or helpful than sweet potatoes.
5. Do white potatoes contribute to chronic and systemic inflammation? Generally speaking no, but for people with autoimmunity, white potatoes can cause issues for a very small subset of people.
So overall, potatoes are a real whole nutritious food, and the main reason there’s a stigma is due to the fact that we typically have them as fries, hashbrowns, and potato chips.
2018 02 14