Not a paradox, but the 80% is the reason that potato chips are made close to the farm. Frito-Lay doesn't want to ship water.
http://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-s...
Fascinating podcast about the economics of the (potato) chip industry.
Lettuce is 96%: https://www.myfooddata.com/articles/vegetables-high-in-water...
Potatoes are a poor choice, most common salad vegetables are around 95%.
I'll bet using potatoes does makes the the question harder for people. However simple the math, it runs up against the intuition "potatoes are full of starchy solids, I'll bet lowering their water weight one point wouldn't be that noticeable a change". Heck, I'll bet this is made harder by exposure to baked potatoes. The actual study on water loss via baking potatoes is paywalled, sadly, but discussion on some fitness forums says that there's a >5% weight loss from baking - which would constitute a 1-point change in water weight.
Still an interesting question, but it feels a bit cheap to invoke a physical intuition that's completely irrelevant.
"Potato Paradox" just sounds so much better than "Water Balloon Paradox"
You can't really "dry" water balloons. The water in them don't really evaporate.
Re:Potato paradox
by douglaswlance on Monday August 13, 2018 @10:28AM
(#17750336)
The water does really evaporate, just takes a lot longer than potatoes.
Would this be less of a paradox if we talked about water balloons? Potatoes, in real life, are 80% water [1].
[1] http://umich.edu/~elements/web_mod/potato/fact.htm