Skillet potatoes are one of the best comfort foods around. After slicing your potatoes into fries, wedges, and spuds, just quickly deep fry your potatoes until it is crispy hot. You can serve your piping hot potatoes with condiments, flavoring powders, or the classic table salt.
Potatoes are healthy food. It provides the necessary carbohydrates to keep your day going. It also has other vitamins and minerals essential for growth and development. In reality, you can eat potatoes daily—if prepared right. Steamed and boiled potatoes can be served daily.
Deep-fried potatoes, however, could only be served occasionally. Further studies found out that consuming skillet potatoes could lead to potential dangers to your health. Obesity, high mortality rates, high cholesterol levels, and heart attack are just a few complications from this disease.
Are Skillet Fried Potatoes Bad?
Potatoes could be cooked in multiple ways. You can boil, steam, poach, and even grill this tasty tuber. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition mentioned that cooking your potatoes from the methods mentioned earlier will not impose any health risk. However, other cooking methods used in preparing potatoes can lead to several complications.
A study conducted by Dr. Nicola Veronese, together with Italy’s National Research Council, found out that people who consume fried potatoes two to times a week can lead to early death compared to other people who eat their potatoes cooked differently. French fries, potato spuds, and hash browns are just several meals cooked by deep-frying.
Frying potatoes create skillet potatoes in deep oil until it is crispy. Additional ingredients like gravy, butter, tomatoes, and leeks are added to provide the meal’s flavor. Cooking oil, known for its high trans fat content, is the main reason why fried potatoes imposed high mortality rates.
Transferable lipids, also known as trans fat, have been linked to heart disease and obesity. Other factors like lack of exercise and improper diet, while eating skillet fried potatoes twice to thrice a week, can drastically increase these health risks.
National Potato Council implies that potatoes are generally a nutritious food. Potatoes are a good source of fiber, which aids digestion and can help someone to lose weight. It also contains antioxidants that fight against free radicals (unstable molecules) from damaging your cells.
The Risk of Eating Too Much Skillet Fried Potatoes
Deep frying is the most common cooking method in all countries of the world. Fastfood chains and several restaurants offer mouthwatering deep-fried foods. Cooking your food on a fryer can provide convenient food. It doesn’t require advanced cooking skills to deep-fry a food, especially if automated fryers will do the work for you.
Who could not resist a crispy potato skin with a moist interior? It might be tempting to consume skillet fried potatoes daily, but you might hold it back after knowing its health risks. Popular fried foods like chicken nuggets, cheese sticks, corndogs, and potato spuds might be a tasty snack—but they could give you several health complications.
High trans fat content
Trans fat is a by-product of unsaturated fats that undergoes hydrogenation. In fried potatoes, deep frying requires extreme temperatures, which makes the skillet fried potatoes drenched in high trans-fat.
Heart disease risk
Consuming skillet fried potatoes daily can increase the chance of high blood pressure and low “good” cholesterol in your body. This introduces the body to a high chance of developing heart diseases. Studies found out that eating fried potatoes per week has a 50% high risk of heart failure than those who are eating it once or twice a month.
Diabetes risk
Skillet fried potatoes can also introduce insulin resistance, which can, later on, can develop into type 2 diabetes. Eating fried foods 4-6 times have a 39% more risk to have type 2 diabetes. Consuming seven and above servings per week may lead to a 55% chance of producing type 2 diabetes.
Obesity risk
Fried foods have higher calorie content compared to their non-fried variants. The high-calorie content is associated with weight gain—and later on, obesity. Without proper exercise and a balanced diet, this can increase your calorie content. High-calorie content can affect certain hormones that are responsible for regulating one’s appetite and fat storage.
May contain acrylamide
Acrylamide is a toxin commonly found in deep-fried foods. This toxin is produced on high-temperature cooking methods like roasting, broiling, baking, and deep-frying. Starchy foods like potatoes have high concentrations of these toxins. If consumed daily, this can lead to several kinds of cancer: kidney, ovarian, and endometrial.
How Many Calories Are In Skillet Fried Potatoes?
Deep frying your food will introduce it on high-calorie content. When foods are submerged in hot, deep cooking oil, the food loses water while absorbing fat, increasing its calorie content.
A small boiled potato weighing 100 grams only contains 93 calories and 0 grams of fat. Once deep-fried on a skillet, the same amount of potato will have 319 calories and 17 grams of fat.
In short, fried foods will have 3-4 times higher calorie content compared when it is non-fried. Consuming high amounts of skillet-fried potatoes will increase your calorie intake.
To prevent skillet fried potatoes from causing serious conditions to your body, listed below are things you may consider:
- Eat-in moderation. If you cannot completely remove skillet fried potatoes from your routine, limit your weekly consumption. Prepare this dish once a week.
- If you cannot limit your consumption, consider exercising. Exercising can balance out over-consumption by eradicating bad cholesterol and excess carbohydrates in your body.
- Have a balanced diet. A balanced diet doesn’t necessarily mean limiting your food intake. In reality, a balanced diet must include an array of food that provides protein, vitamins, and minerals.
- Consider eating potatoes cooked in different methods. Boiled potatoes can have a tasty flavor by adding other vegetables, nuts, and leaves. Grilled potatoes topped with unsalted butter can have the same buttery flavor a skillet fried potatoes have.
