Baked Spuds

les_steaks

Hi all,

Might sound like a stupid question but are baked potatoes healthy?

Reason I ask is I can get them in the local takeaway, add tin of tuna/ mackeral etc. and frozen veg. and have a meal ready in minutes on nights that I come in tired from training and have nothing ready?

Thanks,

Les

Lexus1976

Yes baked potatoes are good for you! Which takaway sells them?

kelle

Most of the vitamins are contained just under the skin, which are eradicated when you peel them - so I learnt from Delia Smith.
I'm amazed you can get them from a takeaway, you couldn't get healthier than what you just described.

daveirl

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les_steaks

Missonis (spelling???) on the Rathgar Rd..

padi89

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=48

I love my spuds, i always enjoy them.As long as you dont dose them in butter and coleslaw your fine.

HammerHeadGym

I'm gonna say no. They are fine for bulking up but not as a health food. I think they come in at around 85 on the Glycemic index.
Now, this flys in the face of old school conventional wisdom and plenty of people will tell you how they've eaten potatoes all their life and the're built like a whippet. All modern methods now point away from, starchy, heavy foods like baked potatoes.

As an aside, i used to work in a chipper and I can assure you, that it rarely does exactly what it says on the tin. Many things are only approximations of the advertisement. Cod, for example is often dogfish (about 10% the cost of cod) and vinegar is acetic acid mixed with water. Therefore, I would be highly dubious of anything sold in a chipper. It is much more likely to be deep fat fried and kept hot in a hot plate style rotisserie oven.

I think if we're honest about it, we can admit that chipper food isn't healthy. Nor has it ever been, nor is it ever lightly to be.

Aedh Baclamh

HHG - Is the GI not affected by the foods you eat with it? Like, he's having tuna and veg with it.

HammerHeadGym

Please, call me HH. lol.

Glycemic index is based on a foods instant effects on blood sugar levels. At 85 the baked potato, while tasty, is just not a health food. And never will be. It breaks down into sugar almost instantly.

davyjose

HammerHeadGym wrote:

As an aside, i used to work in a chipper and I can assure you, that it rarely does exactly what it says on the tin. Many things are only approximations of the advertisement. Cod, for example is often dogfish (about 10% the cost of cod) and vinegar is acetic acid mixed with water. Therefore, I would be highly dubious of anything sold in a chipper. It is much more likely to be deep fat fried and kept hot in a hot plate style rotisserie oven.

It's hard to fake a spud

I disagree about it not being a health food. A baked potato is a natural, unprocessed food. It contains fibre and vitamins. A lot of the starch is resisant, i.e. is digested in the colon and acts in a similar way to fibre. It may not be the perfect 'weight-loss' food - although at 80kcals per 100g it's not bad - but I think your average person on a healthy diet, with an active lifestyle, can easily fit the odd baked spud into their diet.

HammerHeadGym

While i don't consider it a health food, I will concede that it would be the very first thing I let back into the healthy house if I were at some sort of drugs party, where that sort of thing might happen.

daveirl

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t-ha

I wouldn't use the GI scale to 'eliminate' foods from my diet.

The whole reason the GI scale is supposed to be important is that if glucose starts entering your bloodstream so fast it causes an insulin spike, you'll suffer an energy crash and store alot of your ingested calories as fat as well as not burning as many calories as you would have otherwise. However the glycemic load is not just dependant on the GI of the food - it also depends how much of it you ate, and in fact what is really important is the rate of glucose entering the bloodstream after a meal, and that also depends on what you ate it with.

As such, be aware of your energy levels after eating certain foods and decide for yourself what you can/can't eat. I eat potatoes reasonably frequently, just not so much as to make myself zonk out. Like Daveirl mentioned, if you've been in the gym recently and worked out hard you'll probably find you can eat more potatoes than normal and not zonk out, so test it for yourself. For much the same reason I've pretty much given up on couscous.

g'em

These threads make me laugh- much the same as when some poor unfortunate comes along worried that eating 2 apples and a banana a day will make them 'fat' because they heard they were full of sugar and three pages of debate about the best times of day to eat glucose vs dextrose vs fructose ensues :rolleyes:

OP, if it's right after training you can get away with eating a baked spud, don't worry about it. Potatoes are great sources of Vit C, Vit B, tryptophan (makes you feel good) and a host of minerals. Have it with some protein (like tuna or chicken) and a side of veg. It would be better not coming from a chipper, and don't eat it every night. It's all about moderation so use your common sense. If you feel particulalry sluggish after eating it, or you find that it doesn't help you meet your goals by having it in your diet, stop eating it. Through trial and error you'll learn more about your body than anything we can ever tell you.

daveirl

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D-Generate

daveirl wrote:

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A rare speciman of woman so..... ooooh burn, yadda yadda yadda

g'em

D-Generate wrote:

A rare specimen of woman so..... ooooh burn, yadda yadda yadda

At least spell your insults correctly...

daveirl

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