Secret to healthier potato chips and french fries revealed in breakthrough study

Food & Drink

By Brooke Steinberg

Potato chips are technically made of vegetables — and soon they could be considered healthy-ish, too.

Everything we know about spuds and the scrumptious snacks they yield could change after breakthrough food science findings published in the journal The Plant Cell, revealing the healthiest, most cost-effective and low-waste methods for storing and consuming starchy produce.

A team of scientists from Michigan State University discovered a mechanism that could lead to more nutritious and tastier potato varieties — chips and fries included — even when stored in cold conditions, enhancing the overall quality.

Producers of potato-based products store their tubers in cold environments to meet government-regulated food safety conditions; the low temperature triggers a process known as cold-induced sweetening (CIS), which converts starches to sugars. 

The CIS process makes potatoes a touch more palatable, but it also leads to the formation of acrylamide — a carcinogenic compound that has been linked to an increased risk of cancer, among other health concerns — once they’re cooked at high temperatures.

Currently, the only techniques available to reduce the impact of CIS are costly in both price and loss of flavor.

Researchers were able to root out the problem by identifying the specific gene responsible for CIS as well as the regulatory element that activates it in cold temperatures, and halting the process before it starts.

“By studying how this gene turns on and off, we open up the possibility of developing potatoes that are naturally resistant to CIS and therefore will not produce toxic compounds,” Jiming Jiang, an MSU Foundation Professor in the Departments of Plant Biology and Horticulture, said in a statement.

Jiang believes that soon, the new CIS-resistant potatoes could be commercially available.

“This discovery represents a significant advancement in our understanding of potato development and its implications for food quality and health,” said Jiang, “It has the potential to affect every single bag of potato chips around the world.”

He added, “Our next steps involve using this knowledge to create CIS-resistant potato lines through gene editing or other breeding techniques in Dr. Douches’ greenhouses.”