What you’ve always wanted to know about potatoes…
and everything else about healthy eating
On the smallest off chance you missed it, last weeks’ big news was the stunning revelation about the humble potato. Yes, the potato, a much demonized vegetable accused of causing porkyness, has been rehabilitated .
Great minds at Harvard and Cambridge University have been examining the potato as part of a wider study on diet and health involving an impressive 205,000 participants. What they found was that potatoes per se are not the problem but the way they are cooked is. They ‘discovered’ that the potato issue revolves around chips which are deep fried and often ultra-processed. That leaves baked, boiled and mashed potatoes in the clear.
Next up, no doubt, will be a definitive study showing that while fish can be just the thing for a balanced diet it, is less than efficacious when deep fried in batter.
As a graduate from the University of the Bleeding Obvious I kind of knew this. My studies gave me the confidence to work out the formula of chips bad, other potato dishes quite okay. Ditto my confident forecast of new breakthrough studies related to fish.
Nutritional knowledge is a funny old thing because it keeps changing course. Hence the discovery that all manner of demonized foods ain’t half as bad as they are supposed to be. Moreover it is a factual fact that attitudes to things people eat and drink have changed a great deal, and, here’s a bold prediction, will continue changing.
There was a time when tobacco consumption was known as ‘God’s remedy’ and when cocaine was added to cough syrup as part of Coca Cola’s original recipe, said to help drinkers perk up. Then there was a widespread practice of sprinkling heroin on drugs designed for everything from tuberculosis to asthma, at the time considered to be a ‘miracle’ ingredient. I think it’s safe to say that none of these beliefs are held today.
However there are less controversial areas to be found on the battlefield of contested nutritional ideas. Take eggs, for example, long frowned upon as a source of excessive cholesterol but in this enlightened age acknowledged to be a jolly good source of protein and not at all bad as part of a diet where cholesterol is easily digested.
Elsewhere butter is making a comeback; not just because previous concerns over its fat content have lessened but also because of an increasing awareness that margarine and other alternatives tend to be more unhealthy.
I am also delighted to report that coffee has been taken off the bad list because it contains nutrients and antioxidants and helps brain function. I’ve known that for ages otherwise why would I not be glugging down so much of the stuff?
Sure, several liters of coffee consumption per week may not be good for you, nor is a butter infused diet but do you really need a battery of learned research to tell you these things?
Out there in the badlands of the Internet it is hard to avoid every form of dietary advice you can imagine and some you cannot. Health warnings and bizarre diets jostle for space next to exercise regimes often marked out by the need to wear tights – yeah, go figure.
Most of this is utter tosh, trust me, I am most definitely an expert and have more than a shrewd idea where all this is coming from.
A very long time ago, when I was of a lot younger, I got to know a health food shop owner, not because at that age I would demean myself by buying health foods but because his store was a next to a bookshop owned by some friends and the food shop guy was often to be found hanging around the entrance happy to chat in lieu of customers. He often told me that his simple advise to people who came into his shop was to eat less and do more exercise.
You have probably guessed how that story ended. The shop closed. The takeaway lesson? Honesty does not pay in dietary matters. Common sense and flogging health foods are not necessarily compatible.
So, here’s the rub, great swathes of dietary advice are quite safe to be ignored. Tell universities to hold off on great discoveries about potatoes and the like because the bleeding obvious is, er, visible to the naked eye.
I would be happy to bang on about this but am loath to linger at the typewriter when the lure of a small but perfectly formed espresso, accompanied by a fine half corona cigar is in prospect. It’s a new miracle health combination. You read it here first and need not wait for other experts clamber aboard the espresso/cigar bandwagon.