Are potatoes a vegetable or grain? A USDA committee is deciding

They'll be classified a grain.

They're a white carb, pure starch that basically turns into sugar in the body.

Well that would be anti-science but it may make budgets and meal planning easier.

Grains do not grow underground.

Potatoes are not cereals.

Ergo, potatoes are vegetables.

If potatoes are made a grain, then to be consistent other starch roots such as turnips, rutabagas, and parsnips should be made a grain as well . . . leading us up to carrots . . .

Then there's the fact that (traditional) grains are all seeds (and potatoes are not seeds): Wheat, Rye, Rice, Millet, Quinoa, Oats, Buckwheat, Barley, etc.

I took a fair amount of nutrition science and I can see the advantage for meal planning in institutions, and for the diners. Potatoes function as a grain for meal planning. It's to kids advantage that potato being a grain would force the schools to come up with a passable vegetable on the tray, as well. Other than catsup,

[quote]If potatoes are made a grain, then to be consistent other starch roots such as turnips, rutabagas, and parsnips should be made a grain as well . . . leading us up to carrots . . .

It won't go that far. To tackle the obesity crisis, it's worth looking at how we classify these foods for nutritional recommendations, based on their effect on human health.

Dietitians have started banging the gong to separate "non-starchy vegetables" from "starchy vegetables."

Turnips, rutabagas, and parsnips have been classified as non-starchy vegetables.

Starchy vegetables like potatoes (white and sweet), corn, and peas contain a ton of sugar (or what's converted to sugar), causing your blood pressure to jump and crash, potentially making you hungrier and defeating weight loss efforts.

And they're not good for diabetes control, which more and more Americans are faced with. Too many people think all vegetables are the same.

Kittens do not grow underground.

Puppies are not kittens.

Ergo, puppies are vegetables.

Okay, so I skipped a few steps!

And wouldn't it be logic, not law?

I made roasted potatoes tonight for dinner. Red potatoes cubed, olive oil, fresh rosemary, salt, pepper. So good.

[quote]To tackle the obesity crisis, it's worth looking at how we classify these foods for nutritional recommendations, based on their effect on human health.

Potatoes are fine.

To tackle the obesity crisis you've got to get people to stop gorging on fast food and highly processed food.

People need better education about nutrition, and it starts in school based on USDA recommendations.

School districts often serve mashed potatoes or French fries as a side to check the "vegetable" box for a meal, often alongside other starch like bread or corn. One of those starches should be a leafy or non-starchy vegetable.

Schools shouldn't enable Americans' addiction to fast food and processed food, and potatoes served in schools are exactly that.

I thought potatoes were tubers?

Tumors, Rose. Potatoes are tumors.

I would describe it as a starchy vegetable. Really, from a health perspective, it's all about the glycemic index, which tracks the rise in insulin after consuming different foods. Potatoes are very high on the glycemic index, which is sort of surprising, for a vegetable. Higher than white rice, for instance.

Potatoes are not grain. They're not meat or fruit, either. It's ridiculous to ignore scientific classifications just to alter what schools serve and dieticians recommend. R6 is right. Call them starchy vegetables, along with corn, and use that as a guide to meal planning

FWIW, here's a list of what's considered non-starchy vegetables.

Potatoes are a vegetable. A starchy tuberous root vegetable to be specific.

But we all know about the USDA food pyramid which has conveyed incorrect dietary advice for decades to sell specific food groups right? The USDA food pyramid is an industry marketing tool only and not to be taken seriously.

It was originally designed to sell grains and shift a glut of wheat and was designed in conjunction with various aggressive food lobby groups and repeatedly altered to appease food bobby demands. Further iterations of it have basically been designed by the food industry and food lobby groups. It has always been factually and nutritionally incorrect.

Is this trying to do the same thing? Basically we should pay no attention to this. The USDA is food industry and food lobbyist run and not a reliable source of information as everything they do is for their own benefit and economic self-interest. Hopefully most people know this by now. Sort of like a cigarette company saying cigarettes are not addictive etc.

r7, I wasn't constructing a "This, therefore that" set of two statements plus conclusion. I was using the definitions of the terms "grains" and "potatoes" to fit the initial query.

Grains do not grow underground. But potatoes (the edible part) DO grow underground. Therefore, by those facts alone, potatoes cannot be called "grains."

Potatoes aren't cereals. But grains ARE cereals. Therefore, by those facts alone, potatoes cannot be called "grains."

Ergo, based on definitions and facts, since potatoes cannot be called "grains," and given only one other option, potatoes are vegetables.

Your smart-alec riposte is not of the same format. YOU would have needed to state:

"Kittens do not grow underground. But puppies DO grow underground. Therefore, by those facts alone, puppies cannot be called 'kittens'."

But those aren't both statements of fact, are they? No.

I doubt potatoes and other starchy whole foods are causing the obesity, DM epidemic. It's all the other processed and sugared crap eaten and eaten to access and a lazy assed life. This katuffel is why few listen to dietitians, they have no clue what they are talking about.

Nutrition Education: stop eating crap! This is not rocket science, people!!

The End

I just think they're neat.

Potatoes are nothing but empty carbs which are so bland, one must pile them with more carb laden toppings to give them any taste.. I rarely eat them.

They need to scrap the whole system, reclassify and dumb it down for the American public. I propose:

- Lean Proteins (include vegetarian protein sources in this group to help 'Muricans stop thinking that all protein = meat)

- Fatty Proteins

- Vegetables

- Fruits

- Bad Carbs

- Good Carbs

- Dessert!

Smell you, Ms. Crawford at R22!

There's nothing wrong with the food pyramid, except when people see bread in it, they think about wonderbread, cakes and cookies, instead of whole grain bread. Pasta is cheap, but is low in nutrients. At the time of the food pyramid, it appeared in most peoples' homes in the form of macaroni and cheese. The Mediterranean diet is basically the food pyramid. Whole grains, (bulgur, brown rice, barley, oats, whole wheat, farro, spelt), lots of legumes, lots of fresh vegetables, fish, and a sparing amount of meat and cheese. Almost no sugar, and oil is mostly in the form of olive oil.

R19, you have a point. 100+ years ago, people ate a lot more starchy food in the form of potatoes, rice, dumplings, bread, etc., but were thinner. Other factors are more important.

Carbs are foods that we burn for energy. 150 years ago, people were much more physically active. They didn't have cars so they walked much more, had to work chopping and hauling wood, doing laundry by hand, cleaning without modern appliances, intensively gardening, etc. Carbs are necessary for that level of activity, but much less so for our very sedentary society.

When nutritionists start lambasting a food humanity has been eating for hundreds of years, you know they're talking out of their ass. We learned this with eggs and fats. They make a simple topic complicated, like this idiocy: is a potato a grain or a vegetable? Do they wonder why people are fat, confused, and no longer listening?

No matter the bullshit they stir up, potatoes are a good, healthy source of vitamin C, potassium, some of the Bs, and fiber.

It's a fruit. DUH.

A ground apple, as all francophones know

Potatoes are root vegetables.

Americans eat potatoes as french fries, potato chips and mashed with plenty of butter and cream.

We are living our very best 600 pound lives and reclassification of a food isn't the issue.

Ozempic , Mounjaro and all the rest of these medications are a gift and a cure to American fat ass syndrome.

Pizza is a vegetable.

The article makes clear that buying fresh potatoes and cooking them is advantageous, especially if the potato skins are included. The problem comes with all the pre-processed frozen french fries and dehydrated potato flakes, etc.

I usually purchase and consume sweet potatoes with the skin attached. I do use butter, real Kerry Gold Irish butter. I prefer 🍠 potatoes only for the additional beta carotene not for the taste over white or yellow potatoes.

Oddly, I have other things to worry about right now.

Potatoes are vodka.

[quote]Ozempic , Mounjaro and all the rest of these medications are a gift and a cure to American fat ass syndrome.

Until long term studies show that they aren't.

[quote]The Mediterranean diet is basically the food pyramid. Whole grains, (bulgur, brown rice, barley, oats, whole wheat, farro, spelt),

Italians eat pasta. Many do everyday. And it's made from white flower.

Bread is sacred there. And it's also made with white flour. Whole grain breads are not all that popular..

The only whole grain that you'll see is occasionally farro or barley in soups or cold salads. But that's it. Italians eat rice, but it's white rice.

No one eats brown rice unless they're macrobiotic or something like that.

^flour

[quote]Italians eat pasta. Many do everyday. And it's made from white flower.

I don't know that it matters, r37, but Italian wheat doesn't have the gluten that ours does.

You just need to stop stuffing your big mouths, stop with all the it's what you eat shit, and stop eating too much.

Potatoes are a root vegetable.

Is...potato.

I’m a potato. But I want to be a grain. I feel like a grain, deep down inside. I’ve always felt this way. I never liked hanging out with carrots or peas. I felt…funny. Like I didn’t fit. And they could tell I wasn’t the same as them. I know they did. Im a grain! I’m a GRAIN, I FEEL IT!

To tackle the obesity crisis, people need to get off their arses, bend over and pick a pack of potatoes, scrub em, put ‘em in a pan…

The reputation of the so-called Mediterranean diet, as eaten by real Mediterranean people, is that it is supposedly lower in saturated (animal) fat than the Northern European cuisines on which classic American cooking is based. It doesn't have much to do with carbs, which, as R37 points out, Italians eat plenty of.

Also, a classic Italian diet is home-prepared and made with few highly processed ingredients. You could do the same thing with a classic American home-cooked meal, size down the portions to Italian standards, and you'd have a decently healthy meal.

The obsession with carbs will pass, just as the obsession with fats and white sugar (as itself, not as a carb) have passed.

They taste like a grain but fit in my butt like a vegetable.

[quote]Also, a classic Italian diet is home-prepared and made with few highly processed ingredients. You could do the same thing with a classic American home-cooked meal, size down the portions to Italian standards, and you'd have a decently healthy meal.

True.

i think the Mediterranean diet they talk about is NOT Italian food, although they usually don't specify. It's more the Greek diet. One think I only learned recently was that in the Orthodox church, over HALF the days of the year are some sort of fast day, where meat is not consumed. Greeks are mostly Orthodox. That means they are eating a ton of beans (mostly garbanzos and fava), nuts, pita bread (whole wheat), and lots of vegetables, many of which they grow in their own gardens, plus fish from the seas that surround Greece. As one web site puts it:

"The Mediterranean Diet reflects the food patterns typical of Crete, much of the rest of Greece, and southern Italy in the early 1960s"

Those of you who have been presuming that it is the Italian American foods that we all know and love (spaghetti and meatballs, lasagne, garlic bread, etc), have been barking up the wrong part of the Mediterranean.

The main problems with the US diet are: portions are too large, too much processed food that all seem to have little nutrition, high calories and sugar in everything, too many processed carbs (everything seems to come with french fries and white bread; too much driving and laziness, and the normalization of obesity, no exercise and general bad health.

It is amazing how disconnected people are from their bodies, almost like it is something to be feared, medicated, a nuisance just to be dealt with as opposed to a incredible organism that really flourishes with basic good nutrition, some exercise, sleep and minimizing stress. This is only going to get worse.

Potatoes are a floor wax AND a dessert topping!

Potatoes are fucking delicious. Piss off, food nazis!

Ketchup is a vegetable.

[quote]i think the Mediterranean diet they talk about is NOT Italian food, although they usually don't specify. It's more the Greek diet.

I lived in Italy for decades. It has a much longer life expectancy than Greece.

NO Mediterranean people are eating the way they did in 1960 but Italy still does a lot right. Certainly better than Greece.

There are a lot of fat people in Greece and a lot of the Greeks in the US are fat. Hell, there is even two movies about fat Greeks. Between their diet, smoking, and driving, I'm surprised any Greek lives past 60. I think the only ones really eating a Mediterranean diet now are peasants on some islands.

“They’re legumes, momma—they’re called LEGUMES!”

[quote]R14: Potatoes are very high on the glycemic index, which is sort of surprising, for a vegetable. Higher than white rice, for instance.

Hmm. As a diabetic, potatoes don't do much to me, whereas rice beats me up something terrible. Of course, I don't cook potatoes to death; I generally prepare them somewhat al dente (they're still quite soft), and eat them with the skins on, and it doesn't take a lot of insulin to control the results. The fiber in the potatoes takes care of most of it. Redskins and Yukon Gold are my favorites.

Good to see you back, menluvinguy.

[quote]There's nothing wrong with the food pyramid

R24 - every time I see a post from you on DL you confirm how full of shit you are. Various reputable scientific, nutritional and dietary bodies say that the food pyramid is incorrect and from conception has been based on incorrect advice because it is designed to move the sales certain food groups because it was designed by food lobby groups and had to have their approval before being released. Use google.

I remember a recent post from you stating that because the NY Pride march crowds were able to walk home after the parade, that the people of Gaza would have no trouble moving from north to south Gaza on one road which looked like a moonscape with bombs dropping all around them. Remember that bullshit? Yeah. You're constantly full of absolute shit.

[quote]Good to see you back, menluvinguy.

It really isn't R56.