Low-carb potato launched in South Africa
With a R20 million loss in potato sales over the last three years thanks (or no thanks) to the low-carb diet craze, the South African Potato Council has launched the first carb-free potato in the world.
Since the dawn of the low-carb health and diet craze, which started almost a decade ago with the Atkins diet, people wanting to lose weight have been avoiding starches, including the humble potato.
Potatoes, arguably the most popular of all carbohydrate-rich foods and a ’natural’ carb, has been shunned along with pasta and bread as devotees pile their plates high with steak and salad greens. For instance, a medium-sized cooked potato with skin, provides 1½ carbohydrate servings. Put another way, one 100g potato contains about 17g of carbohydrates.
Spokesperson for the Potato Council, Mebeko Thokola, told Health24 "We had little choice but to sink or swim. With over R20 million loss in sales from potatoes quarter-on-quarter, we had to either close business or re-invent the potato."
Scientists at the Council set about to evaluate the nutritional content of three different potato cultivar classification categories and found that one cultivar in particular, the Russet potato, had a DNA profile that allowed its starch content to be modified during cooking, significantly lowering, even completely destroying, its total carbohydrate content.
Fuente: http://www.health24.com/Diet-and-nutrition/Healthy-foods/Carb-free-potato-launched-in-South-Africa-20150401
