I got pulled over by a county sherrif today for my muffler being too loud (which it isn’t according to State Police Lt. Leese). Anyway, first thing he said was “Eating and driving at the same time!?!? Are you crazy. . . . . . blah blah blah” Then I said “Would you like my fries, I’m not going to eat them anyway” and he goes “No thanks, potatoes are bad for you” then he walked away and began to write me up a warning (which I could care less about).
When did potatoes become bad for you?
“Starchy” foods were the red meat of the 1970’s.
anything fried is bad for you. anything high glycemic is not good for weight management and insulin sensitivity.
sweet potatoes are one of the healthiest things in the world to eat…especially uncooked.
I don’t get it, I wasn’t alive in the '70s
Are POTATOES unhealthy? To heck with french fries, I just want the straight dope on potatoes.
Sorry, that 70’s comment wasn’t particularly relevant–
potatos… STARCH
starch is converted into sugar almost immediately.
it causes your insulin to skyrocket and your blood sugar to drop… and in some people it can cause drowsiness, irritability, hunger, cravings, mood swings, weight gain… etc etc
But it gets my shirts nice & crisp.
I’ve tried that… do you have to peel the potatoes first?
Is that really unhealthy though? When I hear “unhealthy” I think polysaturate fats, thousands of calories, hundreds of grams of fat, candy, etc.
it a change of thinking that equates carbs with unhealthy instead of fat. Actually more and more people are regarding fat as healthy.
No, it’s not unhealthy. A potato is a vegetable, and until you adulterate it with one of the many oils we like to add to potatoes, it’s a fine element of a healthy diet. If you leave the skin on, you can even get a little fiber out of it. It would not be appropriate to eat nothing but potatoes, but that’s true of most foods. I don’t believe that complex carbohydrates have quite the dramatic effect described by Mith. That sounds a lot more like the effect of eating simple sugars. Balance, of course, is the key.
So the moral of this story is that you should try eating a baked potato in its jacket the next time you’re tooling down the road in your incredibly loud (yet barely legal) car. Then when the deputy stops you next time to write you the actual ticket, you can give him all this information. Just be sure to balance that potato-handling with some attentive steering-wheel handling.
So, we’ve reached a consensus! (It’s funny that we posted those two views at the same time, isn’t it?)
Both camps regard french fries as unhealthy, though, for the fats on the one side and the carbs on the other.
http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/FoodFacts.asp
Starch or not I can’t figure out how someone can consider that to be bad for you. Of course french fries are a very different story.
Freaky coincidence: I was just talking to a friend who is moving to Westminster, MD in a few weeks. I’ve never heard of the place and was looking up info on it. Then I saw Muldoon’s location. Wow, is that weird.
Sorry for the hijack. I just had to note that.
I’m from westminster too!!
most nutrients are just beneath the skin… do not cut skin off.
You’ve all missed the point.
Potato chips have recently been shown to contain a possible carcinogen called acrylamide. This was a hot news item a couple months ago. You’d probably have to eat an awful lot of chips to be at risk, but people didn’t really know it was in fried potatoes in the first place.
I think the potato is fine health wise until it is ripped from the ground, put in a bag with other ripped out taters, sold to a store, put on display, purchased by a omnivore, taken to the omnivore’s lair, chopped up into pieces, boiled, smashed and then eaten.
Now I axe ya, are you, as a potato going to give a f__k what color pants the bastard that ate you was wearing?!?!?
It’s not that potatoes are bad for you, it’s just that they’re not particularly nutritious. You have to understand the difference between the two. “Bad for you” means that eating it is detrimental to your health, such as candy. Not nutritious simply means that it’s not a suitable source of required nutrients. Yes, potatoes are mostly starch, but so is corn. Both are not really nutritious. Eating too much carbohydrates is an unhealthy way of eating, because your body gets used to that higher sugar level, which can cause an increase of cravings for sugary foods. Starch is a simple carbohydrate, unlike dietary fibres which are found in whole wheat, because they take longer to digest. Starch can literally be broken down in your mouth before swallowed. Don’t believe me? Take a piece of popcorn, place it on your tongue and close your mouth. You’ll be amazed how quickly it dissolves, and you should notice it tastes sweet at that point - becaues the starch was broken down into its base component: glucose.
Foods like potatoes, corn, apples, grapes and pears aren’t very nutritious, but they’re not unhealthy either. You can eat them, just try not to make them your main staple (i.e., don’t make foods like this the main part of your diet, because then you’ll be malnourished and suffer from chronic fatigue during the day which will increase dependence on substances like caffeine to keep you awake). When in doubt, take a vitamin/mineral pill on a bi-daily basis (every other day) as a SUPPLEMENT (not replacement) to a balanced diet with a wide variety of foods.