Boiled / Mash / Baked Potato Dilema

[Faith*]

Hi all,

Right, what do you guys generally do for carb counting with potatoes.

I would normally have some mash or just boil the potatoes but when I check the nutritional information to work out my bolus I'm getting conflicting readings.

In asda Maris Pipers per 100g oven baked is 29.9g carbohydrates
In Tesco Maris Piper state per 100g boiled is 17.4g carbohydrates

No whichever ones I buy I usually mash it so end up with approx 30g of actual carbohydrate I usually go hypo a little later on this because I would give 3 units of insulin. I tried the new values of 17.4 grams and did 1.7 units - I then went higher on my bs (from 5.4 to 13)

I have tried different carb ratio's also but that messes me around I'm just wondering what everyone else does?
thanks

 

[Geocacher]

Potatoes can be a bit of a problem when counting carbs. Maris Piper tend to be sold as mature potatoes so they will have a high level of starch and more carbs.

If you bake them you're concentrating the starches and those sold as baking potatoes tend to be the starchier varities so more carbs. If you boil them, cut in small pieces, in a generous amount of water, and drain them before mashing you can remove some of the starches because they'll leach into the cooking water, though I don't think quite as much as Tesco seem to think.

I generally go for new potatoes like Ania or Charlotte which both have a nice buttery flavour and being immature pototoes they naturally have less starch and less carbs. They're great baked, even if they are tidgy little things. But a bit fiddly to peel and mash so I usually just scrub them well and put up with the peel in my mash. I still get my potato fix with less carbs to worry about.

 

[Faith*]

Thanks Geocacher. I was beginning to think I was going mad! That makes sense about the starches then I'll try cutting them up smaller to get rid of the starches. Would you then use the carbohydrate figures given in the nutritional information then? Or have you adapted your own way of figuring out how much to bolus? I've never tried Charlotte potatoes, I'll see if I can find them in asda later.

 

[iHs]

I find potatoes fairly hard to know exactly how much carb to enter into the bolus wizard on my pump. For a long time now Ive been buying tins of potatoes already peeled and cooked and calculate 3 tiny ones as 10g carb.
For mash I use instant mashed potatoe and using an ice cream scoop calculate 1 scoop as being 15g carb and that seems to work out ok.

When I was a kid back in the 60's my mum used to buy King Edwards and peel and dice them into 1/4s and then leave them to soak in a saucepan of water for about 8hrs so that all the starch would rise to the top and the carb content would be a bit lower. My mum bless was brilliant.

 

[Geocacher]

I'm T2 using diet and metformin so don't have to be as precise as you need to be using insulin, but I keep a notebook full of things I've learned along the way. Best ways to cook certain foods to reduce the carbohydrates, best times of the year for seasonal veg, new favourite recipes and healthier remakes of old recipes. Best restaurants for finding suitable meals. A growing list of things I need to be careful with because they seem to cause unexpected highs. I find it useful to be able to look back on all that and to add to it as time passes. Life is an adventure, not always a perfect adventure, but it's an adventure none the less and sometimes it's useful to take notes.

I have yet to find any nutritional information that is completely reliable. Every piece of meat or fish, even within the same species, has a different fat content and can have a different nutrient content based on the feed given to the animals, every vegetable and grain has been grown under different conditions and will have a slightly different nutrient content. The season of the year, storage conditions, processing and cooking can all change the nutrient content. Winemakers and whiskey distillers both know and exploit that better than anyone.

Most nutrient guides simply list 'potatoes' and give an average, most packaging also gives an average but at least that's usually for the specific variety. And then there's the question of our physiology and of what we eat along with a particular food that can affect how our bodies use the carbohydrates in it.

The best we can ever do is guess, and usually that works fairly well. When it doesn't then we need to edit the figures to suit, I would suggest using a figure somewhere between the baked and boiled carb counts for boiled maris piper potatoes because they will have been stored for a while this time of the year and would have a lower water content and that will concentrate the starches. When new season maris piper potatoes come into the market later in the summer then the lower figure would probably be best.

 

[hanadr]

Potatoes, being plants will naturally vary in their carb content. There's no point in worrying about the decimal fraction given in published data. Certainly mature potatoes will have more starch than new ones. Vivaldi, a variety sold only by Sainsbury's is supposed to be much lower in carbs than others. Waxy potatoes will have less starch than floury varieies. I don't use insulin, so don't have to calculate insulin to food ratios. However, what I'd do is look up the data and round the figure to the nearest whole number.
Hana

 

[Faith*]

Agreed. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack to get the right doses.

I've got a little notebook that I write everything in, carb counts, doses, which is really helpful to look back on. It's just those pesky spuds. I usually only have 1 spud so I'll try to find the exact bolus for it and stick to it.

It's funny because we ate out on Saturday and I ate quite a lot of chips with my Gammon - gorgeous but interestingly I just averaged and guessed 5 units for the whole meal and I was spot on - strange isn't it. Some days you get it spot on and others not so much