How to Eat Potatoes and Improve Your Insulin Senstivity
The study below has been out for a little under a decade, but I recently found it courtesy of Richard Nikoley’s blog:
The study is not ground-breaking, but it’s yet another sign that…
Certain Starchy Foods Have a Lot of Positive Health Benefits
This may seem obvious to you, but for a long time now, many folks (Paleo or otherwise) have placed starchy foods (like rice, potatoes, plantains, etc.) in the same category as sugary candy, sodas, and other problematic carbs like wheat. If studies like this one are right, then starchy foods like potatoes may be the proverbial baby that got thrown out with the bathwater.
In this study, the researchers tested just 10 people over 4 weeks (so it was a very small study) and found that insulin sensitivity improved in people who were given resistant starch. (Resistant starch comes in a few forms, but it’s essentially a type of fiber that isn’t digested by humans.)
It’s a bit of a counter-intuitive finding, since we typically believe that things like potatoes (a common food where this type of resistant starch might be found) are likely to decrease insulin sensitivity.
Potatoes Deserve Reconsideration
We can’t draw any big conclusions from this study, but that’s OK, but there will probably never be a study that gives us all the answers on this subject. It is looking more and more likely though that starchy tubers, which are high in nutrients and low in toxins, very much deserve a place in a good Paleo diet.
(And yes, that means potatoes, which have often been banished for no particularly good reason.)
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