This will make your blood pressure rise… though perhaps not as much as your diet might.
If there’s one enduring stereotype about Irish people after ‘friendliness’ and ‘Guinness’, it would probably be our fondness for spuds – and let’s face it, it’s not exactly a mischaracterisation.
Potatoes have been a staple of the Irish diet for centuries, so it’s likely that there’ll be a lot of people left disappointed by a recent study published in the British Medical Journal.
The study shows that men and women who ate four or more servings of boiled, baked or mashed in a week had an 11% increase in blood pressure. This increased to 17% for those who ate four or more servings of French Fries in a week.
The research also found that replacing potatoes with non-starchy vegetables improved blood pressure by 7%. Crisps, oddly enough, seemed to have no effect at all on blood pressure.
The study involved an analysis of 187000 samples of men and women, across three studies conducted in the US over 20 years.
Will this be enough to put your off the spuds?
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