Let's say you really need to find reliable information about the best diet for high blood pressure

or heart disease or diabetes.

Where do you go?

You go to a website sponsored by Big Pharma that wants to sell you pills to fix your problem

or do you want to treat the cause?

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast with the latest peer reviewed research on the

best ways to eat healthy and live longer.

Today we take a close look at a multi-faceted and often misunderstood root vegetable.

We start with a little trick about lowering their glycemic impact.

If you systematically pull together all the best studies on potato consumption and chronic

disease risk, an association is found for the risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

Yeah, but that was for french fries.

The amount of boiled baked or mashed potatoes was not associated with the risk of high blood

pressure, but there was still a pesky link with diabetes.

Overall potato consumption is not related to the risk for many chronic diseases, but boiled

potatoes could potentially pose a small increase in risk for diabetes.

And that's one of the reasons some question whether they should be counted as vegetables

when you're trying to reach your recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables.

If you look at other whole plant foods, nuts, vegetables, fruits and legumes, which are

beans, puppies, chickpeas, and wantles, they're associated with living a longer life, significantly

less risk of dying from cancer, dying from cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks,

and 25% less chance of dying prematurely from all causes put together.

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