What do potatoes bring to the table?

Potatoes are one of the healthiest foods in the world. The healthiest foods are foods that give you most nutrients with least calories. The foods should also be readily available and affordable.

To tell the level of health in a food, we use nutrient density as a measure. Nutrient density is the amount of nutrients in a particular food in comparison to the number of calories. A nutrient dense food will therefore have the most nutrients while having the least amount of calories.

One medium potato (medium potato is about the size of a computer mouse) has about 110 calories and is also packed with the following nutrients:

Potassium

That medium potato has 18% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for Potassium and this comes with zero fat and zero sodium making potatoes good at lowering blood pressure.

(Recommended Dietary Allowance, abbreviated as RDA means the amount of a nutrient you need to eat in a day)

Vitamin B6

A medium potato will give you approximately 20% of the Vitamin B6 you need in a day. Vitamin B6 is used in the body to convert the food you eat into energy.

Eating potatoes can help with depression, lack of sleep and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This is because the Vitamin B6 in potatoes helps create brain chemicals that play numerous roles in the nervous system.

Vitamin C

One medium potato will give you 45% of the Vitamin C you need in a day. Vitamin C is helps boost your immunity making it hard for common cold and other infections to catch you, Vitamin C makes you look younger and healthy because of its antioxidant effects, it helps with wound healing, helps your body absorb iron, and much more.

Iron

You get 6% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for iron from a medium potato and the Vitamin C in the same potato helps with the absorption of the Iron. Iron does not just help make red blood cells but it also aides the transport of oxygen in the body.

Fiber

Fiber aides digestion, helps with weight loss and lower blood cholesterol.

Because of all the above nutrients; potatoes make you have smooth creamy skin, make you look younger, boost your immunity, make digestion easier, reduce the chances for depression and help prevent anemia.

Potatoes are a super food but if you cook them wrong you do not get all the above benefits. When you fry potatoes (French fries and crisps) what goes wrong?

Two things;

        i.            You increase your consumption of fat which when accumulated leads to obesity, arteriosclerosis (this is when your arteries harden making it hard for blood to flow through), type 2 diabetes and other lifestyle diseases. The world will not end if you eat fries once in a while unless you are addicted to them and you can’t eat a reasonable serving size and walk away (in that case you should run when you see fries). It is ok to eat them sparingly but they should not be part of your regular diet.

      ii.            When you eat fries, you eat a lot of trans fat. This is the type of choice of fat for making French fries commercially.  Trans fats are formed when liquid oil is turned to solid fat by adding hydrogen. This is done by manufactures to add shelf life to the oil, flavor and texture. Trans fats are the bad kind of fats which increases the risk of getting type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. They also lower your HDL (High Density Lipoproteins). HDL is the good kind of fat. Good and bad fat coexist in inverse proportions. When one goes up, the other goes down so if you want your bad fats (Low Density Lipoproteins) to go down you should increase your HDL. Avocado oil, canola oil and olive oil are good ways to raise your HDL.