Yes, potatoes are linked with weight gain, but other favorites are culprits too
The potato isn’t getting much love from the health headlines, as new research finds that eating the tuber in its many forms -- boiled, baked or fried to a crisp -- is associated with more weight gain than eating bacon, hot dogs or doughnuts. But soda, juice, that after-dinner drink ... they don’t help.
Sugary beverages -- and that includes juice -- aren’t too far behind the potato in the new analysis, backing up a growing preponderance of research that calories from drinks add up.
In the study, which surveyed the weight and diet of more than 120,000 people, researchers found that eating an extra daily serving of potatoes was associated with a weight gain of 1.3 pounds over four years. An extra sugary beverage a day, which included Coke, Pepsi or other colas, was linked to a one-pound gain over that time span.
Drinking alcohol was associated with a weight gain of between 0.3 and 0.6 pounds -- among different groups, the largest weight gain was for liquor, and gains for beer and wine varied. Weight gain from 100% fruit juice was less than that of alcohol or sugary beverages, probably because people tend to drink these juices in smaller quantities, wrote the researchers.
The authors, from the Harvard School of Public Health, wrote in the discussion of their paper:
“Short-term controlled trials suggest that liquids are less satiating than solid foods, increasing the total amount of energy consumed. Overall, our analysis showed that changes in the consumption of all liquids except milk were positively associated with weight gain; our findings for high-carbohydrate beverages were consistent with those for refined carbohydrates and starches consumed in foods.”
No single way of measuring the food and drink consumed -- fat content, energy density or added sugars -- could explain all the results, wrote the authors (nuts, for example, are high in fat but are associated with weight loss).
But you might not want to reward yourself with another beer or sweetened soda simply for passing up that extra serving of fries.
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