Potato consumption ‘linked to higher blood pressure’

A new study has indicated that eating too many potatoes could increase a person's risk of experiencing high blood pressure.

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School examined whether higher long-term intake of baked, boiled or mashed potatoes – as well as chips and crisps – could be associated with incident hypertension.

After following more than 187,000 men and women from three large US studies for more than 20 years, it was found that four or more weekly servings of baked, boiled or mashed potatoes were associated with an increased risk of hypertension compared with less than one serving a month in women, but not men.

Greater consumption of chips, meanwhile, was associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure in both genders, though no link was seen with crisps. A possible explanation was that potatoes have a high glycaemic index and can trigger a sharp rise in blood sugar levels.

Further analysis indicated that replacing one serving a day of boiled, baked or mashed potatoes with a non-starchy vegetable was associated with a decreased hypertension risk.

The researchers concluded that their findings "do not support a potential benefit from the inclusion of potatoes as vegetables in government food programmes, but instead support a harmful effect that is consistent with adverse effects of high carbohydrate intakes seen in controlled feeding studies".