Educação pode mudar sua vida

Potatoes are supposed to be one of the world’s greatest foods, filled with calcium, niacin, iron, vitamin C and plenty ofcarbo-hydrates. A diet of milk and potatoes, the textbookssay, will provide all the nutrients the human body needs. Butthere is trouble lurking beneath the skin. According to a con-troversial new theory, potatoes, eaten in large quantities bya population increasingly sedentary and overweight, may bea major contributor to America’s alarming rates of heart dis-ease and diabetes.
The problem, according to Meir Stampfer, a nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, is pototato starch.When you eat a potato and that starch hits the saliva in yourmouth, its tightly bundled rnolecules immediately get turnedinto sugars, which make a beeline for the blood. “You ate apotato,” says Stampfer, “but your body is getting pure glu-cose.” The flood of blood sugar sets off a chain reaction.Insulin pours out of the pancreas. Triglycerides shoot up. HDL(good) cholesterol takes a dive. “lt’s a perfect setup for heartdisease and diabetes,” says Stampfer.
This is not just a potato problem. It’s also a problem withwhite bread, bagels and most white rice. But couch potatoesdon’t have to give up their spuds altogether, as long as theyeat them in moderation. Or they could switch to sweet pota-toes and yams, which metabolize less rapidly and wreak lesshavoc with blood sugar.