Potatoes are rich in starch, a kind of complex carbohydrate. They usually have the bad reputation due to their high carbohydrate content. However, what most people don’t know is that the carbs in the potatoes are the good type which can take a while before your body can break down. Even though you will need carbohydrates to be included in your diet, this can lead to weight gain if you will go overboard and consume too much.
Different Kinds of Carbohydrates
Generally, carbohydrates are categorized as either complex or simple. All kinds of carbs, aside from fiber, will eventually deconstruct to simpler forms and will be absorbed as glucose, which is the main source of energy for all the cells of your body. The simple carbohydrates, like fructose or milk sugar, lactose or milk sugar and sucrose or table sugar have straight structure that can quickly metabolize in a single step inside your small intestine. The complex carbohydrates like starch have complicated branched structure that goes through two unique steps before they can be absorbed as glucose. At first, the saliva will break the complex molecule to a smaller form known as maltose. After that, the enzymes in the small intestine will further break down the maltose to simpler molecules for this to be absorbed as glucose. Fiber is another unique kind of complex carbohydrate because this will not be broken down to glucose. The fiber will instead stay intact and help in pushing food through your body.
Carbohydrate Content in Potatoes
There are different kinds of potatoes that you can choose from, depending on your personal taste or preference. Some of the common kinds of potatoes that you can choose from include the sweet potatoes, new potatoes, Yukon gold, fingerling, russet and purple or red potatoes. All types of potatoes offer complex carbohydrates that come in the form of fiber and starch. A single serving of potato is around 3 ounces or ¼ of a big potato. This serving can provide 80 calories and 15 grams of carbohydrates that come in the form of starch.
Carbohydrates’ Caloric Content
Carbohydrates must compose around 45-65% if the overall calories that you have in your diet. The starch carbohydrates in the potatoes offer 4 calories for every gram that totals to 60 calories from the carbohydrates. If you usually follow a diet of 2,000 calories, the amount that can be found on the food nutrition labels, you will need about 225-325 grams of carbohydrates the whole day.
The Amazing Benefits of Potato Starch
Based on studies conducted, the researchers have observed that the type of starch that can be found in raw potato and corn starch have the same benefits, which include lowered total cholesterol and triglycerides. Also, this can enhance the ability of your body to absorb magnesium, copper, iron, calcium and zinc. The cholesterol benefits may take place since the complex carbohydrates in the starch take an longer period of time to be broken down in the body that slows down the absorption of cholesterol to the bloodstream.
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