Adolescents who eat potatoes have higher quality diets: Study

Aug 09, 2021

New Delhi, Aug 09 (ANI): A recent research has suggested that eating potatoes can be an effective strategy to modestly improve the intake of key shortfall nutrients. The results of the study were published in the journal 'Nutrients'. Compared to no potato consumption, results showed that eating potatoes in any form (baked, boiled, mashed, in mixed dishes and fried) was associated with higher intakes of several essential nutrients, including dietary fibre and potassium - two nutrients of public health concern - and improved nutrient adequacy. The potato is a nutrient-dense vegetable that provides important, critically under-consumed nutrients to adolescent diets. Fried potatoes and potato chips are often paired with less nutrient-dense foods, which can't be teased out in this type of study but may explain the slightly lower diet quality scores among these groups of potato eaters compared to baked/boiled potato eaters. Dietary recalls may be subject to inaccurate reporting. Additionally, even with the use of covariates, residual confounding may exist.