Potato vs. Spinach

A medium, white baked potato (with skin) offers an "abundance" of nutrients:
162 calories
3.6g of protein
0.2g of fat
3.6g of fiber

On face value, the potato appears to be a good choice. However, lurking within that innocent potato, there are 36.5g of total carbohydrate, with a net of 32.9g after deducting for fiber!

As an alternative, those following a low-carb menu may choose to have, instead, one cup of cooked spinach. It too nutrient-rich and provides:
41.4 calories
5.3g of protein
0.5g of fat
4.3g of fiber

Moreover, with just 6.8g of total carbohydrates before deducting fiber, for a net of 2.5g, spinach offers a better choice when counting carbs.

When we stack the nutrients of a potato and spinach side by side we find that spinach provides more quality nutrition too - more calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, potassium, manganese, selenium, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, Vitamin A and Vitamin E.

I think you did a little more than that. IMHO you did enough to cause people here to get the impression that you are dishonestly presenting yourself as a follower of a low carbohydrate diet, when all you really wish to do is argue against it. Those people may be wrong, but so far you appear to be lacking any desire to persuade them.

I don't think people are attacking you for that statement, rather, they are attacking the statement itself- that potatoes are a healthful food. Potatoes are not a healthful food.

I think this is a perfect example of how we have been mislead by the nutrition 'establishment'. If a typical person wants information, they tend to get it from respectable organizations that have been (unbeknownst to them) corrupted by the lipid hypothesis. And the "truths" perpetuated by these organizations are what educates the person. It hurts truth even more that the media is an accomplice.

It takes a good amount of time to discover all the research that the mainstream has relied upon is wrong. Nobody wants to go back and analyze data from the WHI, Framingham, ACCORD, etc. What the researchers conclude is the only thing writers write about, and the average person gets mislead.

Good Calories, Bad Calories (Gary Taubes) is probably the best source available that explains how potatoes and other starches cause obesity and chronic disease in every native indigenous population where they've been introduced.

Nobody is attacking the messenger- just the message.

In my most recent post, I believe I was questioning the messenger's motives. It is not however, an attempt to attack the messenger, but a desire to better understand those motives.

This is from an article I found about the great Potato War. Potatoes were causing trouble even way back then!


What was the great Potato War?
By Chelsie Vandaveer

October 12, 2001

Oh, the scandalous pomme de terre! It causes lust! It causes leprosy! It was the forbidden fruit of Eden! Brought to Europe from the high Andes by the Conquistadores, it was considered food for slaves and the poor. Slowly, the cultivation of the potato spread across Europe. Protestants would not grow it, Catholics planted it on Good Friday, and the poor found that it grew well and they could feed their families.

In the 1700s, Europe suffered from a series of cool, wet summers. Grain crops were failing, potato crops were not. And potatoes could be left in the ground; they did not need harvesting and storage. This fact was not lost on leaders like Frederick the Great. Potatoes were a hedge against famine both from poor grain harvests and in times of war. Frederick got people to plant potatoes all over Prussia and Germany.

Then the ruler of Bavaria died. He had no heirs and both Austria and Prussia wanted the land. Everyone sent soldiers to the War of the Bavarian Succession. The soldiers ran around cutting each others' supply lines. With no supplies, the soldiers survived by pillaging the countryside and digging up all those potatoes. When all the potatoes had been eaten, everyone went home. Since there were no decisive battles, this non-war got named the Kartoffelkrieg or Potato War.

A French pharmacist, A. A. Parmentier, spent the Kartoffelkrieg as a German prisoner of war eating potatoes. When Parmentier returned to France, the stage had been set for the French Revolution. He thought that getting the populace to eat potatoes was a great idea and would hold off this revolution talk. Marie Antoinette wanted the populace to "eat cake", so perhaps that's where Parmentier got the idea. He set about creating an haute cuisine, a banquet for the nobility where every dish contained those "venerous roots". He even got Marie to wear potato blossoms in her hair. Very scandalous of Marie, but all the noble women starting wearing potato blossoms in their hair. The potato never did replace the grains in France. Maybe Marie should have said, "You want fries with that?"

Thanks for that post Regina.

Potatoes are NOT a health food.

Sure they will keep you from starving, but so will bugs and grass. I am not about to eat them either.

There are so many better nutritional choices than a potato. As for vitamin C, would you rather have a potato or a strawberry? Besides, carbohydrates cause your body to need more vitamin c. Glucose and vitamin C use similar metabolic pathways. If your body is flooded with sugar, you can't use the vitamin C properly.

I think a lot of people have no trouble villainizing sugar and understanding the problems it can cause. Where we run into more ignorance is with starches, since the message was drummed into everyone's head that a "balanced" meal has meat, starch and a vegetable. But what few people realize is that that starch becomes sugar during the very act of chewing (and secreting saliva). By the time it hits the small intestines, all the starches are fully converted to monosaccrides (the simplest form of sugar).

Here's a colorful and fun description: http://library.thinkquest.org/11226/main/c03.htm

One of the trainers at my gym who is LC got called stupid by a client when she talked about this.

I think that few people actually think about it. They look at white sugar, and can see that it's refined, empty of nutrients. And despite the blandishment of the industry, no one was really convinced that sugar is healthy. But there is a disconnect when it comes to bread, potatoes and rice. We have been told for so long that these are full of nutrition, that people can't reconcile it with the fact that, that there is virtually no difference between a cup of white sugar and a cup of mashed potatoes. So if you challenge them on it, they get a confused look, a bit like that woman in the HFCS commercial and fall back on the familiar position that carbs are healthy because they contain vitamins and minerals. Yes, so does fruit loops, but only the most nutritionally inept parent (and there are a lot of them sadly) will consider that a proper breakfast for a growing child.

I think that it boils down to what people are told. Plain and simple. People rarely think for themselves and they tend to trust the "experts". Sad that our trust as been so sadly misplaced. If there is a disconnect between what you say and what "everyone" knows, then you must be wrong and they simply don't understand the subject enough to be able to contradict you.

i think a big part of this is due to the food industry's practice of fortifying nutritionally void foods with vitamins that are either only present in miniscule amounts, or with ones that were never there in the first place. think about all the "research" claiming that pregnant women have to eat bread, simply because it's fortified with various vitamins. i never understood why i should eat something that's bad for me to begin with just because it happens to carry so many milligrams of a vitamin. i'd rather just take the vitamin itself and eat foods that will actually benefit me.

Funny, but when I told my DH that my previous efforts to get sugar out of my diet had been duds because I did not know that starches were basically also sugar, he just believed me. I just said "Apparently they are the same to your body." I'm not saying he is typical. He is exceptionally aware of how often something that "everybody knows" is wrong.

Potatoes did not cause obesity amongst the Amerinds, nor did corn before the time of Columbus. They obviously can be part of a healthy diet - not for me. When I tried to go up the carb latter, just before I learned I was diabetic and started metering, my weight went up. When I got a meter I discovered why. Any high carb food ups me and keeps me there. But my wife and mother-in-law can have almost anything they want and stay skinny/not quite slender. And that later weight category may be the healthiest of all.

Skinny and slender don't actually reflect someone's underlying health. This dichotomous thinking that fat is unhealthy therefore skinny must indicate health is just wrong.

Hmmm, no one seemed to enjoy my little article that I pasted in a few posts previously. I guess I'd better explain a bit more, having a little more background info than just that article.

The potato was never considered "good" food, historically. It began in South America where nothing else would grow, and people grew it to prevent starvation. In the 1500's, the Spanish conquistadors brought it back with them as a novelty to Europe, but eating it did not catch on. No one wanted it, people believed it caused leprosy and other diseases, they thought it was poison, etc. The only time it was ever appreciated was by starving people. Even the hungry French disdained the potato...when they were starving!

My point, (which I expected to pass on to everyone by osmosis LOL ) was that potatoes have NEVER been worthy of eating. They have only been used in desperation once the population grew and starvation was a real issue. Why our modern society has suddenly decided to revere them is a mystery to me.

I think that they are worthy of eating for some people. They just are not very likely to be regarded as crucial for health by a bunch of people on low carb diets. I am intrigued by how much havoc they have caused, on this thread and according to your recent posts, throught the whole of history, at least since they made contact with European cultures.