When it comes to disarming disease causing agents in the body, potatoes pack a punch more powerful than many other vegetables. New research has found that while vegetables such as bell pepper, onions and carrots remain valuable dietary sources of disease-preventing antioxidants, potatoes rank near the top of that category. He said people should not only put potatoes on every plate, but should eat them skins and all. Discovery of the potato's high antioxidant activity is reported in the current issue of the Journal of Food Science. Miller, Experiment Station food scientist Dr. Luke Howard, and graduate student Mohamed Al-Saikhan were screening potatoes, looking especially at the pigments in yellow flesh varieties, when the high antioxidant activity was observed.
Antioxidants slam cell doors shut in the face of the harmful free radicals.
Lab results indicated that on a scale of 100, broccoli had an antioxidant value of almost 96, potatoes had about 69, carrots had 32, onions had 25 and bell peppers had 15. The greatest concentration of antioxidants in the potato was in the skin, Howard noted. Preliminary studies by Miller and Howard point to patatin, the major water-soluble protein in potatoes, as being the possible source of the antioxidant activity. People tend to think of potatoes only as high in starch and carbohydrates. Indeed, many people don't realize that one potato also contains half of the daily recommended amount of vitamin C and 750 milligrams of potassium, an element linked to the possible prevention of such ailments as stroke, he said.