[xeromal]

I have an engineer buddy that years past wanted to figure out every nutrient he needed in the smallest amount of variation possible. He had a spreadsheet of various foods, their nutrients, and the amounts needed to maintain his weight. His conclusion was that potatoes give you the most bang for your buck calorie to nutrient ratio. I have his old spreadsheets and just filtered out the other foods.

https://imgur.com/a/ka0FK18

Pretty amazing what they give you as a monofood!

The biggest negative to potatoes is their glucose bump they give you. A solid way to reduce that is to cook them once then cool to room temperature. When you reheat them in any way you want, they will cause less of a glucose spike.

[bmelton]

Food Theory[1] did a (sort of) scientific breakdown on this and came to a similar conclusion, which I think did a great of reinforcing the plausibility of The Martian

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg7DjKPoN1U

[sn9]

Part of the reason the Irish Potato famine was so devastating is that you can get all of your nutrition from just potatoes and buttermilk.

Like plug it into a nutrition calculator and see for yourself.

[Reason077]

I had a engineer co-worker once who did something similar, but it was due to a dietary restriction rather than cost optimization. He'd only eat bland food with no spices due to some stomach/digestive issue. His lunches, as far as I can remember, were always either potatoes with tomatoes or rice with tomatoes. (I don't recall him losing any weight on this diet. Possibly the opposite!)

[ashwagary]

>He'd only eat bland food with no spices due to some stomach/digestive issue.

There is another method that involves focusing on food volumes rather than other restrictions.

The average stomach can hold 8 cups of solid food but intestines can comfortably only process 2-3 cups of food at a time (every 4-6 hours).

The method works for stomachs with faulty fill guages. Fast food meal portion sizes, processed foods, and some medications are really good at breaking the reliability of these guages which is part of the reason for weight issues in western populations, atleast that's the theory behind this approach.

[mulligan]

> 8 cups of solid food but intestines can comfortably only process 2-3 cups of food at a time

this is really interesting, do you have any additional references on this?

[ashwagary]

Similar to the parent poster, it's a solution a coworker came up with to deal with misdiagnosed digestion issues.

He only ate 2-3 cups of food per meal and was symptom free shortly after.

[xeromal]

I always love a true engineer's approach to solving a problem. Their brains are fun to peak into.

[suprjami]

That's amusing. Tomatoes used to be considered a low-FODMAP non-irritant, but Monash (leaders in IBS research) looked a second time and found that was wrong. A small as one slice of tomato can set off an IBS irritation episode in some people.

https://alittlebityummy.com/blog/changes-in-fodmap-ratings-f...

https://www.karlijnskitchen.com/en/monash-university-update-...

[kevviiinn]

Why is a glucose spike bad for non diabetics

[xeromal]

I'm not a doctor, but I believe the best way to treat your body is not to have big swings in values in glucose. If your glucose is 70 and you spike it up to 150 every day, I believe it's just a lot of stress on your body's endocrine system.

Someone can definitely chime in and correct me though.

[qbrass]

You not only get the downside of high glucose levels from the spike, but you get the downside of the insulin your body produced in response (or you injected because you're diabetic) kicking in as the spike falls on it's own, making it crash even further.

[mizzack]

Spiking and recovering is probably better than consistently elevated for insulin sensitivity reasons.

[meindnoch]

Having big swings in your heart rate daily is healthy.

[thefz]

Glucose spike -> oh shit blood is full of sugar, pump out insulin -> blood is suddenly not full of sugar anymore -> feel like shit, want to eat again -> glucose spike...

[kevviiinn]

That doesn't explain why it's bad

[thefz]

Insulin will seize sugar from your blood to store it your cell reserves. You are basically forcing yourself to store fat, and require more sugar, instead of using what you have.

https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bmb.2...

[kevviiinn]

You're just explaining a normal metabolic process, not explaining why it's bad and insulin doesn't necessarily make you crave anything

Insulin gets released after every meal

[thefz]

You are just playing dumb, are you. :)

If you want to know why it's bad, eat a bunch of sweets and tell me how do you feel after!