You Say Potato, I Say......Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

I feel I should beg my Irish ancestors forgiveness for the post I am about to write. Today I will be ranting against the staple vegetable of the Irish diet: the beloved potato. Only in this blog will you read that Oreos are good, and a vegetable is bad. But that's how I roll. 


Normally, as a health educator, I am a big advocate for all things that even look like a vegetable. Heck, I have even used garbanzo beans in a brownie recipe. True story. But a tuber that poses as a vegetable while having a higher glycemic load than a Snickers bar is like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Besides, you know how I feel about Snickers bars. Given the choice between a bar of crunchy goodness and a harmful vegetable, I'll vote to make meat and Snickers the new Irish classic.


(Pulls self away from that glorious food fantasy) As I was saying, potatoes are about the only vegetable I know that actually can do you more harm than good.  With a GL of 26--a number that is virtually a guarantee for weight gain--this veggie can send you on the path to diabetes quicker than Oreos or Fruity Pebbles. No, really. It's easy to trick yourself into thinking, "But at least they don't have any added sugar." Well, I'm here to tell you that your body could care less about added sugar or food labels. It only cares about what happens to the  blood glucose level when you feed it. And potatoes do not make it very happy. They send your blood sugar on a wild, crazy trip that will leave your body begging for "normal" stuff like Oreos. Like a vengeful cat who has been left alone for one too many weekends, it will find a way to make you regret your choice. Enter lethargy, insulin resistance, and eventually diabetes. Which really is way worse than finding cat crap outside the litter box. But I digress.


A lot of people don't seem to care. Consider this list of the top three vegetables that kids are eating these days:
                                                    

                                                     Potatoes

                                                     Tomatoes
                                                     Lettuce


Well, two out of three ain't bad, you may be thinking. Um, nope. Not when you consider that most of the potatoes are french fries, most of the tomatoes are ketchup, and most of the lettuce is that one little leaf they put on the fast food burgers for decoration.  So, if it weren't for fast foods, our kids would barely be getting vegetables at all. That statement should be enough to make even a junk food junkie cringe.


But I have some good news to top off all my tuber-hating. First, weirdly enough, french fries actually have a lower GL than baked potatoes. As long as you don't eat a super-sized box by yourself, you can save yourself about 4 GL points eating those lard-ridden potato sticks. Remember my defense of Paula Deen and her butter? Same principle applies here: the added fat slows down the digestion of the potato into sugar. But it doesn't make them good for you. If you like your spuds mashed, the news gets a bit better: those Thanksgiving classics have a GL of about 18.


And since not all tubers are equally offensive, I am excited about this link to a  super scrumptious garlic mashed potato recipe that combines the glycemic superstar of the potato family--the baby red has a GL of 12-- with the highly adaptable potato poser we in the health industry like to refer to as cauliflower.  This is a great substitute at Thanksgiving and for belated St. Patty's Day celebrations. Believe me, this recipe is so good that only your blood sugar will be able to tell the difference. Your tastebuds won't even know you're pulling a fast one on them. 


I hope adding the potato recipe puts me back in the good graces of my Irish ancestors. Since I ended up endorsing potatoes in the end, I guess we'll call the calling off...off.