Re:Thoughts on the potato diet
by adrian_b on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @02:24AM
(#32066315)
Eating nothing else but potatoes would easily fulfill all the energy needs of your body.
The problem with potatoes and with all similar starchy food, like cereals, bananas, sweet potatoes etc., is that their ratio between energy content and protein content is much too high.
If you eat enough potatoes to also eat enough proteins, you would also gain weight and it would be difficult to do that, because you will be very satiated long before eating enough proteins.
If you eat only enough potatoes to be satiated, you will not get enough proteins and a large part of the weight loss will be from muscular mass, not only from fat reserves.
After one month of potato diet, unless you had been a very muscular person previously it is likely that symptoms of protein deficiency will already be visible, e.g. swellings of the feet due to insufficient albumin in the blood.
A much more effective single-item diet would be to eat some high-protein legume, e.g. lentils with olive oil and iodized salt instead of potatoes with (unspecified) oil and (unspecified) salt, which would provide enough proteins.
Such a diet would be almost complete, except that it does not have enough of some substances required in very small quantities, i.e. sulfur amino-acids, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, choline, vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium.
The problem with potatoes and with all similar starchy food, like cereals, bananas, sweet potatoes etc., is that their ratio between energy content and protein content is much too high.
If you eat enough potatoes to also eat enough proteins, you would also gain weight and it would be difficult to do that, because you will be very satiated long before eating enough proteins.
If you eat only enough potatoes to be satiated, you will not get enough proteins and a large part of the weight loss will be from muscular mass, not only from fat reserves.
After one month of potato diet, unless you had been a very muscular person previously it is likely that symptoms of protein deficiency will already be visible, e.g. swellings of the feet due to insufficient albumin in the blood.
A much more effective single-item diet would be to eat some high-protein legume, e.g. lentils with olive oil and iodized salt instead of potatoes with (unspecified) oil and (unspecified) salt, which would provide enough proteins.
Such a diet would be almost complete, except that it does not have enough of some substances required in very small quantities, i.e. sulfur amino-acids, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, choline, vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium.