Boiled potatoes contain vitamins and minerals, especially potassium, phosphorus, B-complex vitamins and vitamin C. They are low in calories and fat and their high fiber content helps us feel full for longer. If you add butter or sour cream to potatoes, it significantly increases the number of calories and grams of fat, so if you are trying to lose weight, season them with herbs or low-calorie spices.
A large potato, which is boiled with the peel, weighing about 300 grams, contains:
- 261 calories;
- 6 grams of protein;
- 0.3 grams of fat;
- 5 grams of fiber;
If you peel a potato before boiling it, you lose about half a gram of protein, but the content of calories and fat remains the same. Peeled or unpeeled, potatoes have 5 grams of fiber, approximately the same amount as in a bowl of bran flakes and 3 grams of natural sugar.
A large, unpeeled boiled potato is rich in B-complex vitamins, which help the body form blood cells and produce energy from the proteins, carbohydrates and fats from the food it intakes.
Boiled potatoes (especially unpeeled ones) also provide more than half of the vitamin B-6 we need every day, as well as about 30 percent of the recommended daily intake of thiamine and niacin. In addition, boiled potatoes are high in vitamin C and eating them can provide you with half of your daily needs. Peeled boiled potatoes lose half of their vitamin C content, but also provide 25 percent of the vitamin C we need daily.
Potatoes are rich in essential minerals, which help build healthy bones and are good for the nervous and muscular systems. A large potato, which is boiled with its skin, provides 1.1 grams of potassium, which is a quarter of the potassium needed by the human body daily. It also provides about a fifth of the magnesium and phosphorus we need every day. If you peel a potato before boiling it, it loses some of its mineral content.
Boiled potatoes also have a variety of culinary uses. With their help you can prepare a potato salad, wonderful stuffed potatoes, potato patties and sauteed potatoes.
