Uploaded June 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
I like potatoes so you can imagine that the headline “Eating more potatoes may reduce risk for mortality, researchers find” caught my eye. Let’s first deal with the “reduce risk for mortality” claim. The evidence certainly indicates that the risk of mortality is 100% and cannot be reduced. In other words, we cannot escape that appointment with the Grim Reaper. One can, however, talk about reducing the risk of mortality during a specific period of time as a function of some variable. In the case of a study carried out by researchers at the University of Oslo in Norway, that variable was potato consumption.
Between 1974 and 1988, some 77,297 adults with a mean age of 41 attended three health screenings that included filling out food frequency questionnaires. The subjects were followed for an average of 33.5 years during which period 27,848 died and causes of death, particularly those due to cardiovascular disease were recorded. From the accumulated data, researchers teased out a relationship between potato consumption and the risk of death. Why did they do this? The stated justification was that potatoes are a popular food, and therefore their potential effect on cardiovascular disease, one of the leading causes of death, is of interest. I think getting a scientific publication from doing a bit of data mining was also of interest.
Scientific studies appear at a furious rate these days. Some are very good, many are very bad, and most are mediocre. However, you can have a study that is very well carried out as far as methodology, data collection and interpretation is concerned, but contributes very little to the advancement of science. This potato study is such an example. The overall conclusion was that people who consumed 14 or more potatoes a week had a lower risk for all-cause mortality during the follow up period than those who ate less than 6 potatoes. The researchers did try to control for smoking, activity levels and body mass index, but the variety of foods consumed is so wide that trying to isolate the effect of potatoes seems too optimistic. Maybe the potato eaters were eating less meat or less pasta or more fruits. Then there is the issue of how the potatoes are prepared. According to the study, in Norway potatoes are overwhelmingly consumed as boiled. So, this study says nothing about mashed, baked or fried potatoes.
What then are we to make of this study? Should we start eating 14 boiled potatoes a week to try to ward off that appointment with the Grim Reaper? Not without a study that follows two groups of subjects in which the only difference is boiled potato consumption. Clearly this is not doable. As the researchers themselves suggest, the only take-away here is that boiled potato consumption does not seem to adversely affect health outcomes. Hardly cutting-edge research but I suppose it eases the mind of boiled potato lovers. If they are men. No potato effect was seen in women.
I like potatoes so you can imagine that the headline “Eating more potatoes may reduce risk for mortality, researchers find” caught my eye. Let’s first deal with the “reduce risk for mortality” claim. The evidence certainly indicates that the risk of mortality is 100% and cannot be reduced. In other words, we cannot escape that appointment with the Grim Reaper. One can, however, talk about reducing the risk of mortality during a specific period of time as a function of some variable. In the case of a study carried out by researchers at the University of Oslo in Norway, that variable was potato consumption.
Between 1974 and 1988, some 77,297 adults with a mean age of 41 attended three health screenings that included filling out food frequency questionnaires. The subjects were followed for an average of 33.5 years during which period 27,848 died and causes of death, particularly those due to cardiovascular disease were recorded. From the accumulated data, researchers teased out a relationship between potato consumption and the risk of death. Why did they do this? The stated justification was that potatoes are a popular food, and therefore their potential effect on cardiovascular disease, one of the leading causes of death, is of interest. I think getting a scientific publication from doing a bit of data mining was also of interest.
Scientific studies appear at a furious rate these days. Some are very good, many are very bad, and most are mediocre. However, you can have a study that is very well carried out as far as methodology, data collection and interpretation is concerned, but contributes very little to the advancement of science. This potato study is such an example. The overall conclusion was that people who consumed 14 or more potatoes a week had a lower risk for all-cause mortality during the follow up period than those who ate less than 6 potatoes. The researchers did try to control for smoking, activity levels and body mass index, but the variety of foods consumed is so wide that trying to isolate the effect of potatoes seems too optimistic. Maybe the potato eaters were eating less meat or less pasta or more fruits. Then there is the issue of how the potatoes are prepared. According to the study, in Norway potatoes are overwhelmingly consumed as boiled. So, this study says nothing about mashed, baked or fried potatoes.
What then are we to make of this study? Should we start eating 14 boiled potatoes a week to try to ward off that appointment with the Grim Reaper? Not without a study that follows two groups of subjects in which the only difference is boiled potato consumption. Clearly this is not doable. As the researchers themselves suggest, the only take-away here is that boiled potato consumption does not seem to adversely affect health outcomes. Hardly cutting-edge research but I suppose it eases the mind of boiled potato lovers. If they are men. No potato effect was seen in women.
