Issue No. 032 · Potatoes

Mashed potatoes on trial +62 points

One bowl of buttery mash raised my blood sugar 62 points. A half-cauliflower mash cut that rise to 34.

I love mashed potatoes.

My grandmother made them every Sunday with too much butter, and I still think that was the right amount.

I also remember the nap I needed an hour after every Sunday dinner, and I always blamed myself for it.

Then a doctor told me potatoes were basically sugar and handed me a list of foods to cut. Mashed potatoes sat near the top.

So last week I made a big bowl of classic mash with butter and milk, ate it at lunch with nothing else, and watched my glucose monitor for two hours.

+62

Point rise from one bowl of classic mash

One person, one monitor. Your numbers will differ. This is not medical advice, so talk with your doctor before you change how you eat.

That 62-point rise comes from what happens to a potato in the pot.

Boiling swells the starch inside the potato, and mashing breaks it open even further.

But that soft, smooth texture is what makes mash so easy to digest. Your gut turns the loose starch into glucose fast, and peeled potatoes have little fiber left to slow it down.

The 2021 international tables put mashed potato at 79 on the glycemic index, higher than plain boiled potato at 73.

Instant mashed potato from a box scores even higher, at 84.

In other words, mashing makes a fast carb even faster.

My doctor never told me I could change the recipe instead of losing the dish.

Meanwhile... The Hack

I wanted to keep the mash.

Giving up comfort food has never lasted for me, and I doubt it has lasted for you.

So two days later I made the bowl again with one change: half the potatoes became steamed cauliflower. I left the skins on the potatoes I kept and mashed everything with the same butter and milk.

The cauliflower cooked in the same pot as the potatoes, so there was no extra dish to wash.

That added about five minutes, and my sister could not tell which bowl was which.

Nothing about the butter or the bowl size changed, but the starch in each spoonful did.

Cauliflower has a small fraction of the starch in potato, so the half-and-half bowl carried far fewer fast carbs. The skins added a bit of fiber, which may slow how quickly the rest of that starch reaches your blood.

Scientists call this glycemic load, which counts both how fast a carb acts and how much of it sits on your plate.

My rise dropped from 62 to 34.

And I still ate a full bowl... with butter.

That Sunday-style nap never showed up either.

I am one person with one monitor, so your numbers will not match mine. The direction is what I would bet on.

This is the part nobody puts on a diet sheet: you can change the recipe and keep the dish.

You never had to give up mashed potatoes. They just needed a partner in the pot.

★ Welcome to the revolution

Jackie