Potatoes: Nutritional Dimensions

Potatoes, simply boiled, baked, or roasted, are nutritious. Their dry matter provides easily digested carbohydrate calories from starch and protein that is high in lysine and low in sulfur-containing amino acids and thus complementary to the protein in cereal grains. Even a small tuber (100 grams), boiled in its skin, has 16 milligrams of ascorbic acid, which is 80 percent of a child’s or 50 percent of an adult’s daily requirement. Potatoes are also a good source of B vitamins (thiamine, pyridoxine, and niacin) and are rich in potassium, phosphorus, and other trace elements. Preparation of potatoes in fried form eliminates the problem that tubers are too bulky to be a dietary staple for infants or children without an energy-rich supplement. In the United States, however, when fried potatoes become the dominant “vegetable” in children’s diets, their consumption can pose a nutrition problem in the form of too many calories.