Why do white potatoes have such a bad Rep?

I don't know, I just ate cheesey potatoes last night. Potatoes are high in potassium. Something I need because I'm low because of my medication.

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

Because they taste like butts, with the lone exception being redskin potatoes; those are truly fantastic.

I am not familiar with the taste of butts.

I've also not noticed much difference in flavour between potato varieties, though the texture varies a lot.

JustMissTracy wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

fitoverfortymom wrote: »

I love potatoes and eat them a few times a week on my meager 1250 calorie allowance. Usually with some olive oil and sea salt, but sometimes I get crazy and go baked, or heaven forbid HASH BROWNS. A life without potatoes is not worth living.

I adore olive oil on potatoes. I like it even better than butter. Sacrilege, I know. I made the switch after my first high cholesterol test came back and I've never looked back.

My Portuguese hubby does this, but he adds a can of tuna, and sometimes even a boiled egg. Weird combination but he swears by it

Not weird at all. Sounds tasty, like a nicoise salad without the green beans and olives.

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

These days, they're better about putting nutrients back into white flour but originally white flour had no fibre or protein (so that it would have a long shelf life because bugs wouldn't want to eat it since it would have no nutritional value to them). Modern nutrition labeling laws actually originated because companies were selling white flour that had no nutritional value (including insufficient calories). So, they made laws making it illegal to sell food without telling people what was actually in it. This is also why companies have more freedom to understate calorie content than to overstate it.

So, the anti-white-starch sentiment originated when white flour really was nutritionally void. Now that people are reading nutrition labels, they're putting protein and fibre back into white flour products. Personally, I'd still usually rather have the whole grain version, but we're at a point where it's mostly down to personal preference.

Not quite:

The fat in the bran and outer seed coat of wheat and rice goes rancid quite quickly. Removing the bran wasn't about removing nutritional value, it was about making sure that when you harvested most of your calories for the entire year in one big harvest, it didn't go stinky bad in storage.

Only about 25% of wheat's protein is lost when you remove the bran and germ.

What you're removing when you remove the outer layer is the fat, the fiber, and most of the B vitamins. However, to the people who domesticated grains and eventually figured out how to strip off the bran? The payback of that loss for people who lived prior to refrigeration and safe airtight food storage? Their grains didn't go rancid and nasty.

The labeling laws you mention were more the result of people selling "flour" and "milk" that was not actually flour or milk. unscrupulous producers would cut the flour with sawdust and the milk with water or even paint.
Think of the Chinese "melamine in milk" scandals and you've got a good idea what buying food was like before safety regulators, inspectors, the FDA and USDA and FTC stepped in. That flour was nutritionally empty because it often was not actually flour -- not because it had its bran and germ removed.

Because Americans eat a lot of potatoes and since more vegetables are a cure all for everything there must be something wrong with them. Poor iceberg lettuce shares the same fate. If you like them, eat them.

More potassium than bananas.

savithny wrote: »

The labeling laws you mention were more the result of people selling "flour" and "milk" that was not actually flour or milk. unscrupulous producers would cut the flour with sawdust and the milk with water or even paint.
Think of the Chinese "melamine in milk" scandals and you've got a good idea what buying food was like before safety regulators, inspectors, the FDA and USDA and FTC stepped in. That flour was nutritionally empty because it often was not actually flour -- not because it had its bran and germ removed.

I stand corrected. My memory was clearly fuzzy. I was obviously conflating the need to enrich flour with B vitamins to guard against deficiencies with a protein issue that wasn't there.

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

oocdc2 wrote: »

They are a lot of calories for not much protein/fiber bang. But they're yummy and filling, so I have them when I can fit them in.

Where are you looking at the nutritional information?

213g of white potato (which is quite a bit of potato) has 163 calories...4.3 grams of protein (not bad for a vegetable) and 4.7 grams of fiber (that's quite a bit)...not to mention 897 mg of potassium, 70% of RDA for vitamin C, 30% RDA for B-6, and 12% RDA for magnesium.

It's a pretty damned nutritious food....

You need to post that food porn picture of that thing you do with the egg in the baked potato. Sheer genius, that is.

Egg? In a potato???? I have done it with portobello mushrooms, but never a potato.

1. 897 mg of potassium in one baked potato - I am low in potassium. Good to know!
2. Cottage cheese on top of a potato - never thought of this.
For someone who loves baked potatoes with extra butter, when I am trying to lose weight, I do my best to avoid. I will give it a shot with the cottage cheese.
Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions!

Thanks AnvilHead. Will give it a shot!

snerggly wrote: »

I eat all types of potatoes sweet, purple, red, yellow and white, the diet industry, a lot of it isn't based on actual science but fads and misinformation. It is the toppings that kill you.

Oh the irony.