Potatoes aren’t part of your five-a-day: they increase blood pressure

Four servings a week of baked, boiled or mashed potatoes raise the risk 11 per cent, and it’s 17 per cent if you eat chips or French fries. Even cutting out potatoes just one day a week in favour of a non-starchy vegetable will reduce the risk.

Surprisingly, eating crisps (potato chips) doesn’t raise blood pressure, say researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

They discovered the health risks of potatoes when they analysed the diets of 150,000 women and 36,800 men whose blood pressure was normal at the beginning of the study. The risk levels were compared to those of people who ate potatoes less than once a month.

(Source: British Medical Journal, 2016; 353: i2351)

What do you think? Start a conversation over on the... WDDTY Community