Study: Potatoes are Fattening

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Fresh from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a new study shows that eating potatoes can cause you to gain more weight than other foods that will make you fat, like soft drinks, donuts and red meat.

Before you start feigning surprise over a study that proves something that’s obvious, there’s a bit more to it than that. The study gathers information from three separate studies, covering 120,877 men and women and averaged the amount of weight a person gains over the course of four years (3.35 pounds is the average), and then quantified what dietary choices had the most effect on weight gain based on increased daily intake. Basically take what you normally eat and then have an additional serving of something—every day—and tally how it much poundage you put on.

A person who had a daily serving of fruit showed a .49 pound decrease in weight, whereas someone who ate a daily dose of red meat gained an additional .95 pound. The largest contributor to weight gain, more than sodas, butter, or sweets, was potatoes—fried potatoes to be specific. A daily dose of potato chips contributed an average of 1.69 pounds extra over 4 years, while French fries contribute even more (specific number is illusive for that, The Wall Street Journal says it’s 3.35 pounds, but the NEJM abstract does not corroborate that)

The study doesn’t really explain why or how potatoes are more fattening than, say, a daily serving of cake, so I guess we can just chalk it up to SCIENCE. The Wall Street Journal asked a New York University health professor, who gave a fairly funny response: “She says she suspects people who eat potato chips and fries also tend to eat too much in general, making these foods markers for a diet leading to weight gain.” Or maybe it’s significantly easier to eat an entire family sized bag of potato chips by yourself than it is to eat a dozen donuts.

Other factors contribute to weight gain, a beer a day packs on .41 pounds, and quitting smoking can cause you to add on 5.17 pounds of pure misery. Watching television daily adds 0.31 pound per hour watched—which stinks because, I mean, did you guys watch Game of Thrones? That show was punishing enough, I don’t need the added stress of knowing that watching ten hours of television over the past day and a half is going to make me a fat too.

Negative impacts in weight gain were also predictably obvious. Vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts and yogurt (-0.82 pounds!) all stave off the fatty blues, and regular exercise  decreased weight negative 1.76 pounds, which sounds oddly low.

So there you have it folks, being a soda-drinking, junk-food eating layabout will make you fat—science proved it.

- Kris King

Tags: harvard, health, new england journal of medicine, obesity, obvious things, potatoes, science, wall street jorunal, weight loss