You Say Potato, Scale Says Uh-Oh

From The Wall Street Journal

Bad foodsEat­ing more potato chips and French fries is likely to lead to a big­ger weight gain over the years than the weight change asso­ci­ated with eat­ing more of other foods, new research indicates.

The study, from the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, stands out because it quan­ti­fies how much weight a per­son is likely to gain or lose over four years based on one addi­tional daily serv­ing of a range of spe­cific foods. Eat­ing more pota­toes cor­re­lated with a gain of 1.28 pounds, with French fries in par­tic­u­lar asso­ci­ated with a 3.35-pound gain.

All You Can Eat?
An addi­tional daily serv­ing of cer­tain foods was asso­ci­ated with weight loss over a four year period.

  • Yogurt –0.82 pounds
  • Nuts –0.57 pounds
  • Fruits –0.49 pounds
  • Whole grains –0.37 pounds
  • Veg­eta­bles –0.22 pounds

Source: NEJM

There isn’t much com­pre­hen­sive research into spe­cific diet and lifestyle fac­tors behind the creep­ing weight gain—about a pound a year—the aver­age adult experiences.

The authors say their study points to a dif­fer­ent kind of dietary advice for avoid­ing extra pounds asso­ci­ated with aging. “This sug­gests that the path to eat­ing fewer calo­ries is not sim­ply to count calo­ries, but to focus on con­sum­ing a more healthy diet in gen­eral,” the study’s lead author, Dar­iush Mozaf­far­ian, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the depart­ment of epi­demi­ol­ogy at the Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health, said in an email.

The Har­vard researchers looked at three sep­a­rate long-term stud­ies cov­er­ing 120,877 women and men who weren’t obese and who were healthy when the stud­ies began. (They were mostly white, edu­cated and in the U.S.) Sci­en­tists ana­lyzed peri­odic lifestyle and diet ques­tion­naires the par­tic­i­pants filled out over the years and iden­ti­fied items asso­ci­ated with weight gain or loss.

This type of study can’t defin­i­tively say that cer­tain foods cause weight changes. But it found one addi­tional daily serv­ing of potato chips was asso­ci­ated with a 1.69-pound gain; sug­ary drinks, processed meat and red meat were asso­ci­ated with about a one-pound gain. Eat­ing more fruits and veg­eta­bles, nuts, whole grains and yogurt cor­re­lated with slight weight loss over four years. Big jumps in phys­i­cal activ­ity were asso­ci­ated with smaller weight gains, and increased TV-viewing with big­ger gains.

Mar­ion Nes­tle, New York Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor of nutri­tion and pub­lic health, expressed sur­prise that potato prod­ucts were linked with more weight gain than desserts like cake, cook­ies and dough­nuts, which con­tribute the most calo­ries to the Amer­i­can diet, other research shows. She says she sus­pects peo­ple who eat potato chips and fries also tend to eat too much in gen­eral, mak­ing these foods mark­ers for a diet lead­ing to weight gain.

In a state­ment, the Amer­i­can Bev­er­age Asso­ci­a­tion said that the indus­try is com­mit­ted to anti-obesity efforts, not­ing sev­eral other foods were asso­ci­ated with big­ger weight gains than sugar-sweetened drinks. The National Potato Coun­cil was unavail­able for com­ment. A Frito-Lay spokesman had no comment.

—Shalini Ramachan­dran con­tributed to this article

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