Potatoes Are Often Ridiculed and Reviled—Here’s Why You Should Eat Them Anyway
At the risk of hyperbole, we’re going to go out on a limb and declare that the humble potato is actually the Holy Grail food of endurance sports.
Because what can’t the potato do? They’re loaded with healthy nutrients like blood-pressure-lowering potassium. They work as well as energy gels to boost performance. They can deliver a shot of protein to help you make muscle. And they’re delicious and extremely versatile.
In case our word isn’t enough, the nutrition science behind spuds will surely sway you to put a potato on your plate.
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What Are Potatoes Anyway?
Potatoes grow in the ground and are definitely part of a plant, yet there’s actually some debate as to whether potatoes are a vegetable. Though nutritionists generally classify them as a starchy vegetable, like corn and peas, some scientists insist they are a tuber, or the swollen part of the stem that provides food to the leafy part of the plant.
There are thousands of potato varieties with white, red, yellow, purple, fingerling, sweet, and Russet being the most popular. Oh, and those yams you think you’ve been eating at Thanksgiving? Those are most likely sweet potatoes. Yams are starchier and drier; are usually found in international markets, and are not commonly eaten in the United States.
What Are the Health Benefits of Potatoes?
Potatoes have an undeservedly bad reputation in some health-conscious circles, likely because we tend to dunk them in vats of boiling oil to make French fries and potato chips or stuff, mash, and smash them with loads of bacon, butter, and sour cream. They’re actually a very healthy food.
One medium roasted russet has just 168 calories, packs more potassium—good for blood pressure and muscle function—than a banana, and delivers more than a third of your daily requirements for immunity-boosting vitamin C and energy-producing vitamin B6.
They’re also super satisfying. One study comparing hunger satisfaction following a meal with potatoes, pasta, or rice found that potatoes were best for satisfying hunger and led to fewer calories consumed overall than the other two carbohydrates.
Potatoes are also rich in resistant starch, the type your body doesn’t absorb. This kind acts as a beneficial probiotic for good gut health, and promotes healthy blood sugar control. Research shows you can maximize the resistant starch content in your spuds by chilling them and eating them cold after cooking.
How Potatoes Can Help You Ride Better
To state what is perhaps the obvious, potatoes are a rich source of carbohydrates, which you need for high-intensity exercise like riding hard and crushing climbs (Want to really fly up those hills? Climb! gives you the workouts and mental strategies to conquer your nearest peak).
So spuds make a healthful addition to your carb-loading strategy in the days leading up to a big event or race. Just keep in mind that the skin has a lot of fiber, which you want to avoid before big events. So remember to peel those pre-event potatoes.
Potatoes are also a smart snack choice to boost your energy during a ride. A study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that consuming potato puree during endurance exercise maintains blood sugar and improves performance as well as energy gels do.
In fact, the trained cyclists who consumed 60 grams of carbs an hour in the form of potato puree during a cycling challenge performed identically well to those taking an equal amount of carbohydrate through commercial gels, and 6.5 minutes faster than those taking no carbohydrates.
That said, potatoes may be best incorporated as part of a diverse fueling strategy rather than a sole source of carbs. Though the riders in the study generally tolerated the potato puree, they did experience more GI symptoms like bloating and gas by the end of the cycling trial than their gel-fueled counterparts, likely because they needed a greater volume of potato to get the same amount of carbs.
Potatoes are good for recovery, too. For one, they have carbs to help restock your glycogen stores. One study from earlier this year found that when 16 recreationally active adults performed a 90-minute cycling workout and ate potato-based foods afterwards they performed just as well on a 20-kilometer time trial later that day as their peers who used commercial recovery foods between the cycling bouts.
Potatoes also contain some protein to help build and repair your muscles postride. Recent research found that consuming potato protein isolate can help speed up the rate at which your muscles make new protein. And while the study used large amounts of concentrated potato protein, it’s another check in the positive column for including spuds as part of your fueling and recovery strategy.
How to Enjoy Your Potatoes
Chilled, skinless boiled potatoes is one of the classic real food dishes Allen Lim, PhD, coauthor of the Feed Zone cookbook series started feeding the Garmin-Slipstream race squad. Just boil them, let them cool, remove the skins (you don’t need all that fiber slowing digestion when you need quick energy), and toss them in olive oil, salt, and grated Parmesan cheese. That’ll give you a wrap-ready portable energy snack.
Of course, you can also enjoy them roasted, mashed, or grilled like Tour-de-France-polka-dot-jersey-wearing Toms Skujiņš (Trek-Segafredo), a self-described potato lover, who loves spuds so much it’s part of his Twitter bio.
He calls the humble potato the best vegetable out there, and considers them a race day staple. “During stage races, I’ll eat them pretty much daily. When I’m at home definitely less, but because I’m eating less carbs. But I do love grilling up a sweet potato or making some sweet potato mash for breakfast,” he told Bicycling.
Fun Skujiņš potato fact: Though he balks at the notion of having a single favorite type of potato, if he himself were to be a potato, he says he would be a Japanese sweet potato. “Because from the outside it looks just the same as a normal potato, but it’s more delicious and will surprise you once you eat it.” (They reportedly taste a bit like roasted chestnuts.)
To inspire your own potato journey, here are some protein-packed potato toppings and show you how to cook up some nutritious, gluten-free sweet potato pancakes to fuel your next race or ride.
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