consumption of potatoes around 30 kilos per person per year, which makes this tuber one of the most frequent products on the tables of the Spanish. It is a food rich in carbohydrates, of great importance in the daily diet, for which reason nutrition experts recommend its daily consumptionalong with vegetables, salads, legumes and purées.
Of its composition it is worth noting the carbohydrate content, mainly in the form of starch and a small proportion as glucose, fructose and sucrose; Being one of the vegetables with the highest starch content explains its caloric intake (88 kcal/100 g of potatoes). The fiber is present in modest amounts, while experts point out that it is a good source of vitamin C, although a considerable part of it can be lost during the cooking process.
Researchers from Brigham Hospital for Women (BWH) and the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, in the United States, have analyzed what happens when moderate consumption is exceeded and have discovered that a high intake of potatoes and chips may be associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure (hypertension) of adults. His work is detailed in an article published this Tuesday in the ‘British Medical Journal’.
Not eating just potatoes is healthier
“In our study, the participants we looked at who did not have high blood pressure at the start of the study and who ate four or more servings per week of patatos (boiled, baked, or pureed) later had a higher risk of developing hypertension compared with those who ate one or less than one serving per month,” said lead author Lea Borgi, a physician in the Renal Division at BWH.
“In addition, we found that if a participant substituted non-starchy vegetables for a serving of daily boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes, this practice was associated with a lower risk of hypertension.”
Through three longitudinal prospective cohort studies in the United States, the researchers followed 62,175 women in the ‘Nurses’ Health Study’, 88,475 women in the ‘Nurses’ Health Study II’ and 36,803 men in the ‘Health Professionals Follow-up’. Study’ who did not have high blood pressure at baseline.
The ‘chips’, not related to higher blood pressure
Compared with consuming less than one serving per month, participants consuming four or more servings per week had a 11 percent increased risk of hypertension in the case of boiled, baked or mashed potatoes and 17 percentor for fries. The scientists did not find an association between the consumption of potato chips and an increased risk of developing hypertension.
The researchers acknowledge possible limitations of their study. “We took into account all the data that was available to us and made the appropriate statistical adjustments. However, as this is an observational study, there is always a possibility that our results may be explained by something that we have not been able to account for in our analysis,” Borgi and his colleagues acknowledge.
Although participants were not specifically asked in the study what type of potatoes they consumed, white potatoes were considered to be the most commonly consumed.