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Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Higher potato consumption associated with increased risk of high blood pressure





Mashed potatoes. Four or more servings a week of baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes was associated with an increased risk of hypertension compared with less than one serving a month in women, but not in men.
Higher intakes of boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes, and French fries is associated with an increased risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) in adult women and men, according to a study published by The BMJ today.

The US-based researchers suggest that replacing one serving a day of boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes with one serving of a non-starchy vegetable is associated with a lower risk of developing hypertension.

But a linked editorial argues that studying overall dietary patterns and risk of disease is more useful than a focus on individual foods or nutrients.

Potatoes are one of the world's most commonly consumed foods -- and have recently been included as vegetables in US government healthy meals programs, due to their high potassium content. But the association of potato intake with hypertension has not been studied.


So researchers based at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School set out to determine whether higher long term intake of baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes, French fries, and potato chips (crisps) was associated with incident hypertension.

They followed over 187,000 men and women from three large US studies for more than 20 years. Dietary intake, including frequency of potato consumption, was assessed using a questionnaire. Hypertension was reported by participants based on diagnosis by a health professional.

After taking account of several other risk factors for hypertension, the researchers found that four or more servings a week of baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes was associated with an increased risk of hypertension compared with less than one serving a month in women, but not in men.

Higher consumption of French fries was also associated with an increased risk of hypertension in both women and men. However, consumption of potato chips (crisps) was associated with no increased risk.

After further analyses, the researchers suggest that replacing one serving a day of boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes with one serving of a non-starchy vegetable is associated with a decreased risk of hypertension.


The authors point out that potatoes have a high glycaemic index compared with other vegetables, so can trigger a sharp rise in blood sugar levels, and this could be one explanation for the findings.

They also acknowledge some study limitations and say that, as with any observational study, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.

Nevertheless, they say their findings "have potentially important public health ramifications, as they do not support a potential benefit from the inclusion of potatoes as vegetables in government food programs but instead support a harmful effect that is consistent with adverse effects of high carbohydrate intakes seen in controlled feeding studies."

In a linked editorial, researchers at the University of New South Wales argue that, although diet has an important part to play in prevention and early management of hypertension, dietary behaviour and patterns of consumption are complex and difficult to measure.

"We will continue to rely on prospective cohort studies, but those that examine associations between various dietary patterns and risk of disease provide more useful insights for both policy makers and practitioners than does a focus on individual foods or nutrients," they conclude.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by BMJ. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


Thursday, June 2, 2016

How A Scientist Sounded The Alarm On Sugar Back In The 1950s—But Was Ignored


By Rachel Lapidos for Well+Good


Imagine if people thought you were crazy for saying sugar is bad for you.
British scientist John Yudkin knew the feeling: He died a pariah in the 1970s because he held the unpopular idea that sugar was the number-one health threat, The Guardian reports. Yudkin’s findings from more than a decade of research—published in 1972’s Pure, White, and Deadly: How Sugar is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It—had unfortunate timing, according to the Guardian. At the time, the idea that saturated fat was the number-one health threat was so widespread that Yudkin’s findings were ridiculed and his reputation was ruined.
Today, however, he’s being celebrated by a new breed of “sugar is the devil“ nutritional experts. His ahead-of-his-time claims (last year the US issued guidelines on curbing sugar for the first time) are being championed by people like journalist Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, and science writer Gary Taubes, who wrote Why We Get Fat, according to the Guardian.

How did Yudkin get overlooked to begin with? He began floating a theory that sugar was a public health hazard in the late 1950s, around the same time that President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in office. His doctor treated him with a low-cholesterol regimen (which US health authorities have since backed off from)—an approach that Yudkin was very publicly critical of, the Guardian reports. A bit of a scientific pissing match resulted, and Yudkin lost.

“They took him down so severely—so severely—that nobody wanted to attempt it on their own,” Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specializes in the treatment of childhood obesity, told the Guardian.
But posthumously, Yudkin’s findings are back in the scientific mainstream—guiding a new generation of scientists (not to mention documentarians and dessert lovers!). Sweet irony. But a bitter pill for those of us who were careful about cholesterol and saturated fat—ignoring sugar grams—for years.
Are You Addicted To Sugar Without Knowing It?