"Potatoes bad, nuts good for staying slim, Harvard study finds..." WaPo

I beg your pardon, Washington Post!  OK, I have not read the Harvard study, but that is the most simplistic and erroneous bit of info re the noble spud I can imagine. The piece published yesterday goes on to gush over yogurt, as in "...perhaps the biggest surprise was yogurt, every serving of which kept off nearly a pound over four years."

A serving of your average fruit-laced, high fructose corn syrup-filled  commercial yogurt? Or a serving of full fat, plain organic Straus Family Creamery yogurt from happy cows?   

So now America's dairy farmers are gloating, and the spud growers are mashing their own heads, and something complex is once more made simplistic, and misleading. And America's diet-crazed women are scooping cartons of Dannon into their carts.

!!!!!

Here's the beginning of a piece just noted today from SeattlePI: 

"Pity the poor potato.

First, the anti-carb folks shun it. Now a Harvard study attacks it.

The study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine says the spud is making us fat.

To which Chris Voigt says nuts.

"If eating potatoes was so bad for you...I'd be dead by now."

That's not hyperbole. Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission, went on a potato-only diet for 60 days last fall to counter the negative publicity against spuds.

It made him briefly famous. It also made him skinny.

He dropped 20 pounds. His cholesterol, triglycerides and blood glucose were all down. His cholesterol, for example, went from 214 to 147.

"Every health indicator," Voigt said, "was better or the same."

We of The Potato Museum have other stories like this. We continue to think that eating "good" foods like the potato, and a wide range of other foods, in moderation, is still key. ( We have irritated and annoyed the potato industry by stating here and there that French Fries made fresh should be an occasional delicious treat, not a daily staple, and yet fries consumption is on the rise all over, particularly in China, because the commercial industry is all about processed potatoes.  So much for our proselytizing...)

But I should read the actual report. Yes.

 

Comments

[Gastric Bypass Man]

I think most food can be a beauty by the bite kind, as long it's taken the proper way and the right amount or proportions. Healthy lifestyle contributes a lot too in a person's physical appearance. Nice post!

[Kevin]

Fun read, but your post definitley underscores an important, and oft-overlooked, point. When the media jumps on the bandwagon of promoting or demonizing a particular food, they never seem to make the distinction between a natural product and a laboratory enhanced commercial product.

While I'm not saying that everything commercial is bad, the two yogurts you mentioned above surely impact nutrition differently.