Potatoes

@SlimLizzy this is where your new thread is.

Healthline is usually fairly well balanced in its advice, and this piece seems to be quite informative.

As a T2D on oral meds, I follow a lowish carb diet, but I do eat potatoes because I used my meter in the early days to find out the portion size/ potato type etx that suited me. Anyone wanting to eat potatoes or other starchy foods should also eat to meter to work out their own personal tolerance levels.

One thing to remember is that it is generally the starch content that is our real enemy. A tuber or root veg is designd by nature to increase starch over its lifetime, so mature potatoes and ripe fruits have the worst sugar effect generally, I found that buying baby potatoes, or smsll salad potatoes are better for me than any form of mashed pot.

As regards the GI aspect of potatoes, a reasonably good substitute are sweet potatoes. They do not spike me as much as white pots, and I can have larger portions in my diet,

Potatoes are generally a no no for anyone wanting to follow any form of ultra low carb or keto diet. so it depends on what you are aiming for in terms of control regime (i,e, diet plan outcome).

My regime is more relaxed than many others in the Forum, and as a consequence I still use some medication to assist me, But it makes food choices a bit easier for me, anf it means that I can share my diet with other members of my family. Saves cooking 2 meals at the same time.

Maybe the headline might be "Should you eat potatoes if you have T2"

The answer then comes from the article..

bulkbiker said:

Maybe the headline might be "Should you eat potatoes if you have T2"

The answer then comes from the article..

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The article contains basic information that most forum users could find useful. it is not specific to any treatment and adds value whether one is an insulin user or not. It is particularly of interest to prediabetics or gestational diabetes, as well as other variants. The OP is prediabetic and probably under 'control by lifestyle and diet' advice from GP and NICE,

As you pointed out, the banner headline in the article is of special importance to T2D and is a mesage one would be hard pressed to ignore. But the NHS standard advice is to eat starchy foods, and this is what Newbies are being sent home with,

At least the article gives a detailed breakdown of what one of those foods does in terms of effetive carb content. Lets face it potatoes do not declare this on their labels, and most food apps also ignore the different parts and just go for a generic potato has xxx carbs/100g

Just google the 'nutrition in potato' and you will not find the info as discussed in the article.

Lets face it. Most websites do not give a value of carbs when raw and also when cooked, and this makes a difference to someone covering for a meal with insulin. ,

Depends if you want to keep treading water and surfing the seas of hyperinsulinemia by eating the maximum amount of glucose possible, or if you truly want to drain it all from your body and reset the metabolism. Choices.

Jim Lahey said:

Depends if you want to keep treading water and surfing the seas of hyperinsulinemia by eating the maximum amount of glucose possible, or if you truly want to drain it all from your body and reset the metabolism. Choices.

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Another choice is to eat a small amount of carbohydrates, an amount that wouldn't have resulted in you developing Type 2 diabetes in the first place. Not everyone is going to be able, or want, to keep to your extremely restrictive diet and surely it is better that they reduce carbohydrates to a level that is sustainable for them, rather than try to exclude them all together and give up. You and seem to have turned keeping your blood glucose under control into a sort of religion and always answer questions about any sort of food with carbohydrates as if it was the work of the devil. Eating moderate amounts of carbs is the way forward for most people and to imply that by doing this they are doomed, is totally unreasonable.

Edited by moderator to remove an inappropriate tag.

Mr_Pot said:

Another choice is to eat a small amount of carbohydrates, an amount that wouldn't have resulted in you developing Type 2 diabetes in the first place. Not everyone is going to be able, or want, to keep to your extremely restrictive diet and surely it is better that they reduce carbohydrates to a level that is sustainable for them, rather than try to exclude them all together and give up. You and seem to have turned keeping your blood glucose under control into a sort of religion and always answer questions about any sort of food with carbohydrates as if it was the work of the devil. Eating moderate amounts of carbs is the way forward for most people and to imply that by doing this they are doomed, is totally unreasonable.

Edited by moderator to remove an inappropriate tag.

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Completely depends on personality.

If you are someone for whom "moderation" and "control" are possible then yes it is possible way of carrying on.

If however like most people "moderation" is extremely hard to achieve then I'd say abstinence is far easier.
It is similar to telling an alcoholic that if they only have one alcoholic drink they will be fine. Check out some of Dr Jen Unwins work on food addiction. Her experiment at the PHC conference (along with this sites own Charlotte Summers) was quite a reveal.


As Dr David Unwin says.. telling people to eat less poison still means they are having poison it just might not be killing them so fast. (I paraphrase but that's the gist).

...and as for that killer carrot......

Mr_Pot said:

Another choice is to eat a small amount of carbohydrates, an amount that wouldn't have resulted in you developing Type 2 diabetes in the first place. Not everyone is going to be able, or want, to keep to your extremely restrictive diet and surely it is better that they reduce carbohydrates to a level that is sustainable for them, rather than try to exclude them all together and give up. You and seem to have turned keeping your blood glucose under control into a sort of religion and always answer questions about any sort of food with carbohydrates as if it was the work of the devil. Eating moderate amounts of carbs is the way forward for most people and to imply that by doing this they are doomed, is totally unreasonable.

Edited by moderator to remove an inappropriate tag.

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Hence "choices"

EDIT: I have just reread your post [bold] and you are basically attacking my choices. The irony monster just keeps on giving around here. Maybe we can just read stuff and not necessarily agree with it, but not feel like we must defend our own choices whilst attacking those of the perceived attacker?

Back to potatoes.

Hmm - would I rather eat my entire day's carbs in the form of potato, using a teaspoon, or have a salad and a stirfry.
Not much room for debate really.

Resurgam said:

Hmm - would I rather eat my entire day's carbs in the form of potato, using a teaspoon, or have a salad and a stirfry.
Not much room for debate really.

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Your entire day's carb allowance may be much less than someone else's. If someone can manage the salad with a small helping of potato salad, who are we to deny them?

Jim Lahey said:

Hence "choices"

EDIT: I have just reread your post [bold] and you are basically attacking my choices. The irony monster just keeps on giving around here. Maybe we can just read stuff and not necessarily agree with it, but not feel like we must defend our own choices whilst attacking those of the perceived attacker?

Back to potatoes.

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You are of course free to make whatever choices you like for yourself. Implying that other people's choices are wrong is difficult to distinguish from telling them.

Jim Lahey said:

Depends if you want to keep treading water and surfing the seas of hyperinsulinemia

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To get back to @SlimLizzy 's question: I thought the article gave a balanced approach to potatoes for a pre-diabetic to consider.

SlimLizzy said:

What do people think?

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For the benefit of @Mr_Pot. Please see above.

Now let's move along and avoid spoiling the thread simply because you dislike my dietary choices and/or writing style (as evidenced by your first response).

Potatoes - in all forms - were one of my favourite foods but for me they are now definitely unacceptable, along with just about every other carbohydrate rich food. But that doesn't mean that the same applies to everyone else. Even on insulin and oral meds, I still can't control BG with even a tiny amount of potato, oats, wheat or even carrots and sweet potatoes, which are at least supposed to be better in terms of GI. But from reading posts on these forums it is clear that this doesn't apply to everyone else. So advice, even from acknowledged experts, has to be tempered by personal experience.

SlimLizzy said:

Just found this article
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/potatoes-and-diabetes

What do people think?

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Seeing as this thread has been recycled here, here is what I posted originally.

We eat a lower carb potato called Spudlite.

I cook a bag of them up, then keep them in the fridge till I need some for a meal then reheat them.

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/829357/potato-spud-lite-prepack
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/459369/potato-spudlite-baby-pack

Other people might be able to cope - but for me it is a choice between a small amount of potato and walnuts coleslaw celery radish cucumber green salad tomato beetroot sweet pepper - it isn't a difficult decision to make.