 White potatoes have a high glycemic index, and consumption of high glycemic impact foods may increase the risk of diabetes. Normally after a meal, we'd like our blood sugars to just gently, naturally rise and fall. But with high glycemic foods like potatoes, you get an exaggerated blood sugar spike, which leaves your body to overcompensate with insulin, forcing your blood sugars lower than when you started, which results in negative metabolic consequences, such as a rise in triglyceride fats in the blood. However, potatoes are a good source of potassium, vitamin C, and polyphenols which may counterbalance the glycemic impact. This may explain why potatoes appear to have a neutral effect when it comes to lifespan, unlike other whole plant foods that have been associated with actively living longer. In my last video, I detailed my Nip and Nuke method where the act of chilling potatoes can dramatically lower their glycemic index, even if you then reheat them in a microwave. How else might we reduce the glycemic impact of white potatoes? The answer is the same way you make anything better in your nutritional life and broccoli. The co-consumption of two servings of cooked broccoli with your mashed potatoes would certainly do it, immediately cutting the insulin demand by nearly 40%. In contrast, adding chicken breast makes things worse, and adding tuna fish makes things even worse still, nearly doubling the amount of insulin your body has to pump out. But why does plant protein make things better, but animal protein makes things worse? Because decreasing consumption of branched chain amino acids improves metabolic health. I cover this in my book, How Not to Diet, as well as my video on the topic. Speaking of how not to diet, remember the section on vinegar? Here's the blood sugar and insulin spike, some with pre-diabetes can get from eating up bagel. Feet that same bagel with a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar diluted in about a quarter cup of water, though, the impact is significantly less. Does it work for potatoes too? Simply chilling potatoes may cut down the blood sugar and insulin spikes, but to get significant drops in both, you just have to add about a tablespoon of vinegar to drop levels by 30 to 40%. That was just plain white distilled vinegar. Is it the vinegar itself or would any acid-y condiment do? In a test tube, lemon juice appeared to have a remarkable starch-blocking effect, but you can't know if it works in people until you put it to the test. And indeed, lemon juice reduces the glycemic responses to bread, and not just by a little, but like 30%. Now the subjects were drinking a half cup of lemon juice, but that makes it even more remarkable that it helped, because that added an extra half teaspoon of sugar, yet they still had a better blood sugar response. Vinegar is more potent, though. Just one to two tablespoons a day of vinegar diluted in water can significantly improve both short and long-term blood sugar control and diabetics, which is why clinicians may want to incorporate vinegar consumption as part of their dietary advice for patients with diabetes.