Overview
- Three weekly servings of French fries were associated with a roughly 20 percent higher risk of type 2 diabetes in analysis of 205,107 participants followed for more than 30 years.
- Baked, boiled and mashed potatoes showed no significant link to diabetes risk in the same long-term cohort data.
- Substitution modeling estimated that replacing three weekly servings of fries with whole grains could lower diabetes risk by about 19 percent, while swapping other potato preparations could yield a 4 percent reduction.
- Complementary meta-analyses covering over 500,000 people and 43,000 diabetes cases across multiple continents reinforced the cohort findings on potatoes and whole grains.
- Researchers noted that the observational design and predominantly White health-professional sample limit causal conclusions and called for more diverse, intervention-based follow-up studies.