Thoughts on the potato diet • Hacker News Board

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#421

Post by galaktus » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 5:38 AM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #30

There's actually some science behind this diet. Potatoes are the highest scoring food on the satiety index. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/15-incredibly-filling-f... Basically they're the most filling food per calorie. So if you subscribe to the idea that losing weight is mainly about how many calories you consume, a potato heavy diet should be effective. And an all potato diet, while monomaniacal, even more ef…

You don't seem to factor in the glycemic index. If someone spreads such meals over the day, it keeps spiking blood sugar levels (potatoe meals have a high glycemic load) and realsing lots of insulin. That doesn't sound too efective for weightloss.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#422

Post by idontwantthis » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 5:40 AM UTC

> But I felt something—I wanted to eat other foods, to jump onto a higher curve on the above graph. I don’t think this feeling has a good name, but it’s basically what you feel when you have trouble turning down that after-meal iced cream.

English doesn't have a specific names for this, but in Khmer there is a related word: "tralowahn". It means the feeling of being full of whatever you are currently eating. Usually used to describe the feeling after eating creamy/buttery western food. Cambodian people use it all the time, and being aware of that feeling seems to go a long way to prevent overeating.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#423

Post by theptip » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

This reminds me of a SSC article reviewing of a book by Guyenet[1], which describes the “buffet diet” vs what I’ll summarize as the “Soylent diet” (nutrient sludge).

The finding was that giving people unlimited boring nutrient sludge on tap, they consumed way fewer calories while still reporting satiety (not feeling hungry).

The basic idea being if you restrict yourself to boring food, then your appetite is lower. And the inverse; if you eat at a buffet and can have any number of diverse flavors, then your appetite (and “fullness threshold”) is higher.

Any diet where you just eat one thing is therefore going to equilibrate at a lower caloric intake than a diet where you are allowed to eat multiple flavors.

I’m a bit skeptical about glycemic load (I had potatoes down as by far the worst vegetable of them all) but perhaps that isn’t the current understanding of things. Any diet of one-thing is going to have strong appetite suppressing effects. I suspect there are more nutritious options, like “only eat salad with no dressing” which might be boring enough to suppress appetite, while also being nutritious enough to sustain longer-term. You don’t want to be the first case of scurvy in your town this century.

1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry...

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#424

Post by adrianN » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 5:48 AM UTC

xeromal wrote: post #99

safety1st wrote: post #30

There's actually some science behind this diet. Potatoes are the highest scoring food on the satiety index. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/15-incredibly-filling-f... Basically they're the most filling food per calorie. So if you subscribe to the idea that losing weight is mainly about how many calories you consume, a potato heavy diet should be effective. And an all potato diet, while monomaniacal, even more ef…

I had a buddy that created a spreadsheet of various foods and their micro/macro nutrients. He's an engineer and wanted to engineer his diet to cover every deficiency in the minimal amount of food possible. He told me that potatoes were almost the perfect food if you could magically reduce the amount of glucose you took from them.

A nice anecdote about mathematicians trying to solve this problem:

> Again the diet seemed to be plausible except for calling for the consumption of 200 bullion cubes per day.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160411141356/https://dl.dropbo...

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#425

Post by safety1st » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:01 AM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #125

safety1st wrote: post #30

There's actually some science behind this diet. Potatoes are the highest scoring food on the satiety index. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/15-incredibly-filling-f... Basically they're the most filling food per calorie. So if you subscribe to the idea that losing weight is mainly about how many calories you consume, a potato heavy diet should be effective. And an all potato diet, while monomaniacal, even more ef…

This seems highly unlikely to me. I have reactive hypoglycemia, and can say that potatoes spike my blood glucose levels more than table sugar - they have a really high glycemic index, and anyone with blood sugar issues should totally avoid them IMO. And the thing about foods with a high glycemic index is that they cause you to feel hungry when your blood sugar rapidly drops back to baseline. I find protein and fat wa…

I agree that potatoes are high GI and that this idea is counterintuitive.

My observation was simply that research exists which substantiates this counterintuitive idea (quite a bit of it I believe, the satiety index has been around since 1995).

I'm sure it would spark an interesting discussion if someone had time to dive into the research and the studies.

http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm gives an overview and mentions a few of the studies.

As an aside, this potato diet supposedly allows salt and oil - which is all you need to make french fries. French fries did not score well on the satiety index.

Boiled potatoes did.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#426

Post by safety1st » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:06 AM UTC

Swannie wrote: post #338

GordonS wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, potatoes can spike and crash my blood sugar faster than anything else. I haven't eaten mashed potato in a decade or so, but IIRC it only took half an hour or so before I was trembling, sweating, feeling very anxious and fearful, and having a strong desire to eat sugar. Not long after I'd become progressively more confused, and sometimes aggressive. I know 2 T1 diabetics, and both never touch potatoes because…

There's your answer: mashed potato. Not only did you boil the potato, but you pre-chewed it too. Mashed potato is about as close as you can get to refined potato (potato flour). What you've created is easily digestable amylopectin - pre-chewed, already gelatinized and suspension with water. The amylase in your saliva can mix extremely well with mashed potatoes, and within minutes that amylopectin will be available as…

Mashed potatoes also contain milk and butter, which don't do well on the satiety index.

But really we are talking about two different things: GI and satiety. Yes potatoes are high GI. It would follow that they will spike your blood sugar. No claims have been made to the contrary.

Satiety is about how full you will feel per calorie eaten of that food. Multiple factors contribute to satiety. Specifically boiled potatoes score super high on the satiety index.

Not mashed potatoes. Not french fries, potatoes gratin, etc.

The topic is only tangentially related to GI.

Don't mean to be cranky here but I was hoping people would talk about the article, the underlying concept (satiety), and the research, instead of going off on lengthy discussions about quasi-related personal anecdotes.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#427

Post by fauigerzigerk » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:07 AM UTC

csours wrote: post #267

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, exactly, but would you really describe these cultural changes as a disease of managing hunger on an individual psychological level (which is how I understood the term)? If something like what you're describing is going on then our psychological ability to manage hunger hasn't changed at all. Other things have changed, which is my whole point.

Yes, the conditions we live under have changed; the big question is "Why are some individuals so much more affected by the new environmental effects than others and what should we do about it" When we gain weight, we understand we need to eat less to lose weight. But that obviously does not work for many many people. I'm carrying excess fat right now. Abolishing capitalism or taxing soda (or whatever other social, po…

I think you're absolutely right that as an individual you have to find solutions that work for yourself, not wait for some vague set of social conditions to change.

I'm not even sure what those conditions are. Capitalism is easy to blame for everything because it creates choices, both good and bad ones. But some capitalist countries have an obesity problem and others far less so. Socialist Cuba is a lot more obese than most European countries.

So I don't know what causes it on an epidemiological level and I have no solutions to offer. I'm merely questioning a particlar diagnosis. Framing the problem in a way that helps you personally is fine of course, but it's not the same thing as finding the truth about what causes the obesity epidemic.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#428

Post by brigandish » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:11 AM UTC

stevage wrote: post #299

rockostrich wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While anecdotal, it entirely depends on habits and context. If your usual breakfast is pretty big and you tried to switch then you'd definitely start to get pangs of hunger earlier than you usually would. But after a while, your body would adjust and you'd be fine for longer and longer (really until whenever you usually ate your next meal). It's the reason why intermittent fasting or "one-meal-a-day" sucks the first…

How would you get through the initial pains? Hunger is absolutely intolerable for me. When I go out for breakfast I will often have two eggs...and a couple of big pieces of toast, mushrooms, hash browns, spinach etc. I have great difficulty believing that two eggs alone would be sufficient.

Like some other types of pain (exercise being the most obvious, marriage being another;) tolerance to it can be built up.

For example, I've done the fast mimicking diet twice in the past couple of months - a little bit ineptly at points (always plan properly!) - which left me feeling very hungry. Certainly, by the last day of each, I was planning what I'd eat the next day in great detail and anticipation.

The lasting feeling it left (aside from the obvious health benefits) was to be reminded of what real hunger is like, not the semi-boredom, semi-distracting-itch kind that makes me nip to the fridge for a snack. That is very tolerable to me now.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#429

Post by safety1st » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #380

rootusrootus wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Potatoes are more filling per calorie than broccoli? Spinach? Way, way, way more filling. Regular vegetables have basically no fill value at all. Just a fancy form of water & vitamins. Potatoes are quite good at filling.

I'm pretty sure this is quite wrong [1]. While potatoes score as the most satiating "carb" it seem far from the most satiating food, vegetables have tons of fiber score a lot higher in satiety vs. nutrient density.[2] > Just a fancy form of water & vitamins No. 1. https://optimisingnutrition.com/calculating-satiety/ 2. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p_QyR5ImpQSJ_QODYl-tKxeKfj...

#1 is a really great link. I hope people click it and read it.

It specifically mentions the potato phenomenon:

> It’s worth noting here that the star performer in the satiety study was the plain boiled potato. People found it filling and hard to eat much at the buffet three hours later. This could be due to the low palatability of plain potatoes or the effects of resistant starch which forms when we cook and cool potatoes before eating.

> You may have heard of the Potato Hack Diet where people eat nothing but potatoes and lose weight. Unfortunately, while satiating, plain potato is not the most nutrient-dense and may not provide enough protein to maintain high levels of lean muscle mass during weight loss. You would also need to eat it without added fat (e.g. butter, oil, etc.). Otherwise, it’s extremely easy to overeat (e.g. chips).

That's why I speculated that a diet of potatoes, a lean protein source or two, and no added fats could make for a diet that's nutritious and promotes weight loss.

I'll probably break all of these rules and have fish and chips tonight!

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#430

Post by jillesvangurp » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #198

jillesvangurp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, that's the genius of Indian cuisine: making otherwise bland ingredients (chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, spinach, etc.) taste amazing. I just polished off a simple rice, spinach and tuna dinner. Very tasty thanks to some sprinkling of misc. spices. I could swap out the rice for potatoes and it would probably even healthier.

> the genius of Indian cuisine: making otherwise bland ingredients (chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, spinach, etc.) taste amazing. How is that different from any other cuisine? Rice, noodles, potatoes, beans, cabbage, fish, meat, chicken all get mixed with spices in almost every cuisine

Of course there are other styles of cooking. Indian cuisine excels at just the complexity of the spice blends they use. Completely the opposite of Italian cuisine which tends to be minimalist in terms of numbers of ingredients. Just a handful of ingredients typically.

As a Dutch person where salt & pepper are considered excessive in some places, quite a contrast. Let's just say I know what unseasoned vegetables and potatoes taste like after they've been boiled to death. Not great.