The Important Role of Potatoes, An Underrated Vegetable Food Crop in Human Health and Nutrition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite frequently being described as a carbohydrate-laden, calorie-rich unimportant part of the human diet, potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) are one of the most nutritive vegetable food crops in the world and, in comparison to most other vegetables are richer in essential human nutrients. These include proteins, starch and fibre, major, secondary and trace minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and phytochemicals. Potatoes have an abundance of vitamin C and the mineral potassium (K) which are vital for health. Potassium reduces the risk of Blood Pressure (BP), cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), osteoporosis and strokes. Vitamin C helps reduce strokes and hypertension and prevents scurvy. The predominant form of carbohydrate (CHO) in the potato is starch. A small but significant part of this starch is resistant to digestion by enzymes in the stomach and small intestine, so it reaches the large intestine essentially intact. This resistant starch is considered to have similar physiological effects and health benefits as fibre. A medium size potato (148 g) contains 4 g protein and very small amount of fat or cholesterol. The fibre content of a potato with skin is equivalent to that of many whole grain breads and pastas. Potatoes contain rather large amount of the enzyme catalase, which converts hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water and thus prevents cell injury. Potatoes contain phytochemicals such as lutein and zeaxanthin; which protect and preserve eyesight and may help reduce the risk of macular degeneration. It is not the high Glycemic Index (GI) in potatoes or in any other food, but the number of calories consumed from all foods that causes weight gain. Overall, potatoes are an underrated source of essential human nutrients. Potatoes also contain toxic compounds, such as α-solanine and α-chaconine which are known to induce toxicity. These poisons cause gastrointestinal disturbances causing vomiting and diarrhea but severe poisoning may lead to paralysis, cardiac failure and comma. Green areas in potatoes containing chlorophyll are harmless but indicate that toxins may be present. According to the American Cancer Society, food born toxin such as acrylamide is formed when starchy foods such as potatoes and potato products are cooked at temperatures above 121C. However, deep frying at 170C is known to effectively lower the level of toxic compounds, while microwaving is only somewhat effective and freezedrying or dehydration has little effect. The highest levels of acrylamide are found in CHO-rich foods, such as potato chips and French fries, which had been cooked at high temperatures.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".