Are yellow-fleshed potatoes healthier than white? And what about the glycoalkaloid toxins? The high glycemic impact of potatoes may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, perhaps by chronically overstimulating the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. In my last two blogs, I explained how you can decrease the glycemic impact of white potatoes by eating…
Broccoli, vinegar, and lemon juice are put to the test to blunt the glycemic index of white potatoes. White potatoes have a high glycemic index, and consumption of high glycemic impact foods may increase the risk of diabetes. Normally, after a meal, we’d like our blood sugars to rise and fall gently and naturally. But…
If you eat potatoes when they’re cold, as in potato salad, or chilled and reheated, you can get a nearly 40% lower glycemic impact. If you systematically pull together all the best studies on potato consumption and chronic disease risk, an association is found for the risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension—but that’s for…
Do potato eaters live longer or shorter lives than non-potato eaters? Is there a link between potato intake and the incidence of hypertension? Harvard researchers followed the diets and diseases of more than 100,000 men and women for decades and found that those who ate potatoes on most days—not only French fries and potato chips,…
Does the link between white potatoes and diabetes extend to non-fried potatoes without butter or sour cream? The trouble for white potatoes began in 2006, when the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study, which had followed the diets and diseases of tens of thousands of women for 20 years, found that greater potato intake was associated with…
Prunes, figs, and exercise are put to the test as natural home remedies for constipation. The act of defecation is very private and the object of cultural taboos, so much so that it’s rarely thought of, even by physicians—but it should be. Constipation accounts for three million annual visits to doctors in the United States…
Glycidol may help explain why people who eat fried foods get more cancer. “The main purpose of frying is to produce foods with good consumer acceptability. However, not all acceptable foods are safe.” Food chemists have been very interested in the newly discovered toxic compounds produced by frying. We’ve been refining vegetable oils for more…
What does an anti-inflammatory diet look like? “Intervention studies to enhance healthy ageing need appropriate outcome measures, such as blood-borne biomarkers, which are easily obtainable, cost-effective, and widely accepted.” We need blood-borne biomarkers of mortality risk. For example, having higher levels of C-reactive protein in your blood may increase your risk of dying prematurely by…
Inflammatory markers can double within six hours of eating a pro-inflammatory meal. Which foods are the worst? Excessive inflammation may play a role in a number of leading causes of death and disability, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. “But what are the stimuli that jumpstart the destructive inflammatory cascade?” You typically hear…
Pomegranates are put to the test for weight loss, diabetes, COPD, prostate cancer, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The case of POM Wonderful (the pomegranate juice company) vs. Federal Trade Commission made it all the way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals before being denied review by the Supreme Court. In that landmark case, a…