Potatoes or Omega-6 makes you fat? | Hunt.Gather.Love.

Potatoes Make You Fat? Or Omega-6 makes you fat? | Hunt.Gather.Love.

Potatoes Make You Fat? Or Omega-6 makes you fat?

Posted Thu, 06/23/2011 - 10:29 by Melissa

This morning I clicked on this headline at Grub Street "It's official: Potatoes make you fat. Which still explains nothing about why the French are not obese. [WSJ]"
No, it's not about potatoes, but about potato products:

Eating more potato chips and French fries is likely to lead to a bigger weight gain over the years than the weight change associated with eating more of other foods, new research indicates.

Apparently these are worst than cakes and sugary foods

Marion Nestle, New York University professor of nutrition and public health, expressed surprise that potato products were linked with more weight gain than desserts like cake, cookies and doughnuts, which contribute the most calories to the American diet, other research shows. She says she suspects people who eat potato chips and fries also tend to eat too much in general, making these foods markers for a diet leading to weight gain.

 Personally, I'm not surprised. The difference is in the industrial vegetable oil. While many baked goods do contain some vegetable oil, I suspect fried potato products contain much more.

More science on the study at Gene Expression. As with all self-reported population studies, serious problems loom. I suspect "whole grain" eaters are just health-conscious individuals. Most people who think they are eating whole grains are eating processed foods masquerading as them. Same goes from yogurt, the food of weight-conscious women, which is often spiked with tons of sugar.

What boggles my mind is that schools still serve fries and baked goods. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about nutrition, from low-fat vegan gurus like Joel Fuhrman to moderates like Marion Nestle to low-carb gurus like Jeff Volek, could agree that fried foods and sugary foods are bad for you. Yet they are on the menu EVERY DAY in most public schools. We should stop arguing about meatless Mondays and local vegetables and still focusing on this sort of trash we are shoveling into our children's mouths. If we can't eliminate these foods being served to our most vulnerable populations, that's just sad.

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• PepeSi1via 3 days ago

  I don't know...."vegetable oil" has the word vegetable right in its name. And MyPlate, which I reference on a daily basis to remember what to eat, has a big section of fruits and vegetables. So it's like cooking with broccoli juice, right? Basically?

  3 people liked this.

• thatgirljj 3 days ago

  I feel very strongly that bickering over nutritional minutiae is a distraction from the real issue of getting real food on the table and dumping the fake, manufactured foods. Particularly those targeted at kids.

  1 person liked this.

• Stancel 2 days ago

  I'm not trolling...I'm just not that rigid when it comes to "health" and eating "healthy" ;) Not paleo...not anything. Maybe I will change. I feel good if I eat a lot of healthy foods, but I also like to indulge.
  
  

• Stancel 2 days ago

  I like sweet potato fries. They kind of taste better. although I still like French fries, as long as they're real fries that taste like potatoes and not McFries. And ketchup is a must. Although you could use mild salsa instead of ketchup for a healthier spin on things.
  
  And I prefer tortilla chips (made from corn) to potato chips. Potato chips make me feel kind of nauseous and they're not really that good. I like cornbread too. but not plain whole corn. But I only eat chips with a dip, like guacamole, or sour cream onion dip. I don't binge on bags of the stuff by itself.

• Roland Denzel 3 days ago

  I have no doubts about the oils causing issues, but the study doesn't say whether the master potato eaters also had a dessert every night or cheese danish for breakfast, just that they had extra servings of potatoes.
  
  I also wonder if they looked at those who lost weight and what they dropped from their diets. I doubt the yogurt eaters merely added servings of yogurt in addition to their normal diet, and as delicious as milk is, extra milk is not a weight loss miracle. Something was displaced.

• StabbyRaccoon 3 days ago

  Oh dear lord, why do people who have never thought about any one subject for more than 30 seconds in their entire life have such influence in the media?
  
  This is spot-on, supported by the evidence. I'm going to start calling them vegetable oil chips for the sake of expressiveness.
  
  On another note I love butter fries and olive oil chips, just think of all of the health and healthcare money we could save by ousting the large seed oil crops and simply replacing them with healthier oils. Sheesh.

• Guest 3 days ago

  I don't know about the whole most whole grains aren't actually whole. Certainly a lot of what passes for "healthy whole grain" is filled with junk, but I can see now reason why boiled grains would be any healthier (or less health, for that matter) than bread. I have read Darya Pino's posts and all she can really muster in terms of evidence (as far as I can see) is that whole grains have a lower glycemic index. I personally question the validity of the glycemic index and so that reasoning is null to me.
  
  Also, I think that very few people (including the people who, in epidemiology, get healthier scores for consuming whole grains) good with actual whole grains. Cooking with WHOLE grains, that haven't been ground into some kind of flour, is a pain in the arse. Whenever I do that it takes me 40 minutes to an hour to cook them satisfactorily. Compared to white rice, I always get terribly impatient for them to finish.
  
  Also, while maybe not the case for modern bread, but tradition bread is actually healthier than the whole grains themselves (due to reduction of anti-nutrients, etc).

• Melissa 3 days ago in reply to Guest

  Yeah, I'm not a "grains are teh ebil!" person, but the pain in the assness of making traditional grain products keeps my consumption low. If I want buckwheat pancakes I have to go to an inconvenient farmer's market for the freshly ground organic flour, buy raw milk yogurt, ferment it in the yogurt etc etc. etc. On some Sundays there is a market where the sell fermented flat bread, but again, expensive and inconvenient.

• Erin 3 days ago in reply to Melissa

  I grind buckwheat in my Blendtec on the occasions I feel like eating it. It works really well for grinding small amounts of fresh flour.

• ABDada 3 days ago

  I have zero doubt about your conjecture. I cut potatoes out entirely many years ago. After following Dr. Kurt Harris' blog since the beginning (and him introducing potatoes again), as well as Martin Berkhan's blog (who also eats a whopping amount of potatoes), I decided to slowly reintroduce the starchy devil back into my cooking.
  
  If I cook them myself, in healthy fat with a simple serving size, I never bloat up and I don't feel like junk the next day. But if I have fries at a restaurant (even just a handful or two), I do bloat up and I do feel crappy 24 hours later.
  
  It's all about what fat carriers we use (or specifically, what fats we eat and what starch carriers come along for the ride).

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