Harvard Researchers Find the Potato Isn't a Health-Conferring Vegetable (An Addendum)

And drinking fruit juice isn't beneficial to your health, either

The earlier posts on the US state level factors apparently controlling COVID19 mortality rate and state population life expectancy indicated fruit and vegetable consumption were both important factors in determining COVID19 resistance and life expectancy. It turns out that research results published by a Harvard-based research group early last year¹ indicate, among other things, that America’s favorite vegetable, the potato, confers no long run health benefit to those who eat it:²

Higher intakes of fruit and vegetables were associated with lower mortality; the risk reduction plateaued at ≈5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. These findings support current dietary recommendations to increase intake of fruits and vegetables, but not fruit juices and potatoes.

USDA photo

1. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.048996

2. Given that the potato is the most frequently eaten vegetable in the US, the Harvard research finding concerning the potato’s lack of positive health effect likely explains the longevity-lowering effect of vegetable consumption seen in the state level data modeling reported here. For all practical purposes, ‘vegetable eating’ in the US just means eating potatoes.