Anti-diabetic potato

Montana State University researchers have found several varieties of potatoes that could help foil type 2 diabetes.I talked with Alice Pilgeram, an assistant research professor. “We started looking at this project about potatoes in the United States and our potatoes appear to be very high glycemic index in that they have a lot of starch in them and when somebody eats them they will have an immediate sugar rush. There was a project that happened in Australia several years ago where they went through and they started looking at all the different lines of potatoes they had in Australia and they found one that instead of causing this huge spike in blood sugar actually caused a very slight increase in blood sugar. That is a low glycemic index. We copied them in that we went ahead and got as many different varieties of potatoes as we possibly could and screened them. We wanted to see if they had a better glycemic profile. We were able to find five different varieties of potatoes that actually have very good glycemic profiles and that type of potato would be much better suited for consumption by someone who has diabetes or some type of metabolic blood disorder in that they can eat a normal serving of these potatoes and shouldn't see this massive spike of glucose in your blood. It's the difference between eating a highly processed white bread versus eating whole wheat bread.