Are Potatoes Fattening?

When cooked in the right way, potatoes can be as healthy as other veggies. Here are some of its benefits.
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Potatoes have been unfairly getting a bad rap. Find out about potatoes, weight loss, and healthy diets.
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Potatoes -- one of the most commonly eaten vegetables on the planet -- has both fans and enemies. Learn about the potato's many health benefits, health

Are potatoes fattening? Are potatoes even healthy? Find out why potatoes have a lot more going for them than the low-carb advocates might have led you to think.
Tags: Are Potatoes Fattening?, Are Potatoes Healthy?, Clean Cuisine, potato, potatoes

Here's a somewhat disturbing headline from one of Epicurious's sister sites, Self.com: Potatoes Linked to Weight Gain. The article reports that Harvard researchers have found that fries are linked to weight gain more than any other food, and that potato chips aren't doing our waistlines any favors either. That all sounded like pretty duh-worthy news until this part: And an extra serving of potatoes of any kind--even baked--was linked to a 1.28-pound weight gain in the four-year period. While I wasn't so surprised that fried food would make one fat, the news about baked potatoes was a bit of a bummer. The article goes on to suggest some great potato alternatives (quinoa, brown rice, barley, cauliflower, and kale), but I'm not quite ready to toss out the spuds. First, there's the the phrase extra serving, which makes me think the problem might have more to do with overeating in general, rather than the source of the calories. And then there's the fact that potatoes have a lot of good nutritional qualities: They are a surprisingly good source of vitamin C, as well as B vitamins, and other nutrients (see our article on Comfort Food that's Not Fattening for more on the benefits of potatoes). To be fair, the Self.com blog doesn't suggest giving up potatoes altogether, and I'm not planning to. How about you? Does this study have you rethinking spuds? If you're going to keep eating potatoes, consider this recipe for Grilled Potato Smash (pictured above), which includes yogurt, a food that was actually linked to weight loss in the same study, according to the Los Angeles Times article Potatoes Can Add Plenty to Waistline.

By themselves, potatoes are not fattening. However, most people do not eat plain baked potatoes, which consist of about 130 to 150 calories. Usually, its the ingredients people use with potatoes that are quite fattening, such as toppings on a baked potato. In addition to baked potatoes, people like to fry or mash them using fattening ingredients as...