You probably heard about the unfortunate boy who ate only french fries, Pringles, and pork and went blind? And you probably head that you should limit yourself to only six French Fries at a time? So are potatoes bad for you? Or maybe you heard of the potato diet, where this potato is the perfect food to sustain you and better than others? So which is it?

When the coffin maker, Banting, described his diet, the first of the low-carbohydrate diets, he made a point of saying he would avoid potatoes. For low-carbohydrate people everywhere the potato became synonymous with the dreaded “whites” – white sugar, white flour, white rice, and white potatoes.

Then another physician, Dr John McDougall touts potatoes as “naturally slimming” and feels that if people would eat more starch and no meat that all human ills would disappear.

Today’s podcast answers some of the questions about the much maligned potato – is it the savior of nutrition and something to savor, or is it the carrier of everything that is obese in America? Can we really eat French Fries or will they make us go blind? Oh — who doesn’t love McDonald’s French Fries (even better when they were made with animal fat)?

When it comes to satiety, or the feeling of being full, it turns out that the potato ranks up at the top. Meaning, the addition of a potato to a diet makes a person feel fuller, longer, and they consume fewer calories. This was shown in one study with children (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4775821/) where they compared different starches. Some of those starches at lower glycemic index (a measurement of glucose blood levels after eating foods). This study showed, “The results of this study support the hypothesis that energy intake and glycemic response during and following an ad libitum meal containing potatoes, rice or pasta is not predicted based on their GI. Boiled mashed potato co-ingested with meat resulted in ~40% lower energy (kcal) intake, with similar postprandial glucose, insulin, GLP1 and ghrelin compared with BFF, pasta and rice.”

In another study examining the potato and other “white” vegetables (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23674805) it was concluded that ” It is concluded that application of the glycemic index in isolation to judge the role of white vegetables in the diet and, specifically in the case of potato as consumed in ad libitum meals, has led to premature and possibly counterproductive dietary guidance.” Simply put- the potato is low in calories but it is high in satisfaction.

What about Fried potatoes? While one study showed that French Fries were associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30581777) – it is also clear that other factors, such as other foods the people were consuming, may have more influence than just the fries. And while fries made by fast food establishments have high caloric content (a large FF from McDonalds is over 500 calories) . The other concern is that deep fried foods can create potentially dangerous compounds such as acrylamide. If the potatoes are cooked in an air fryer – where 1/10th the amount of oil is used, and can be olive oil, there are about 100 calories less per serving.

Can potatoes be ones only source of nutrients? Probably not. For 200 years poor Irish subsisted on mostly potatoes but this would lead to malnutrition. A single potato contains :

Nutrition FactsPotatoPotato, O’BrienPotato, au GratinPotato, bakedPotato, boiledPotato, microwavedPotato, redPotato, russetPotato, whitePotato, white, bakedPotato

So it is not complete nutrition. Even if you eat 5 lbs a day, which some people did. This leaves people with incomplete nutrition and prone to die from infectious diseases. Many in the potato famine died from yellow fever and typhus.

Potatoes are an important part of a balanced diet – but not the only part. Avoiding the sour cream, bacon bits, and butter to the baked potato saves the same amount of calories as adding two scoops of vanilla ice cream. Nothing wrong with eating that in moderation, but one should account for such additions in their daily caloric limit.

While purple potatoes do have an anti-oxidant anthocynan and a phyotchemical called chlorogenic acid – which have been associated with lower blood pressure and decreased blood clots, the nutritional value is about the same as a regular potato. Still, those extra benefits are probably worth spending the extra money making purple a part of your plate.