"In the study, participants who did not have high blood pressure at baseline, and consumed four or more servings a week of potatoes (boiled, baked or mashed) later had a higher risk of developing hypertension compared to those who consumed one or less than one serving a month," said lead author Lea Borgi, physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in the US.
Replacing one serving a day of boiled,
baked, or mashed potatoes with one serving of a non-starchy vegetable
can lower the risk of developing hypertension, the researchers
suggested.For the study, published online in The British Medical Journal, the team followed over 187,000 men and women from three large US studies for more than 20 years. Dietary intake, including frequency of potato consumption, was assessed using a questionnaire.
"In the study, participants who did not have high blood pressure at baseline, and consumed four or more servings a week of potatoes (boiled, baked or mashed) later had a higher risk of developing hypertension compared to those who consumed one or less than one serving a month," said lead author Lea Borgi, physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in the US.
The results "have potentially important public health ramifications, as they do not support a potential benefit from the inclusion of potatoes as vegetables in government food programs but instead support a harmful effect that is consistent with adverse effects of high carbohydrate intakes seen in controlled feeding studies," the researchers concluded.