Potato

The potato is the 50 Man Foods' starch. It carries more potassium than a banana, a surprising amount of vitamin C, and a starch that digests cleanly — without the gluten, lectins, phytate and seed-oil-laden fat that come with bread and most grains.

Cooked in tallow or butter and salted, it is also the best-tasting way to eat the fats this diet is built on.

Daily, as the starch
2 recipes
Root and tuber
Updated Sep 2026

What it supplies

Nutrient · per 100 g, baked with skin (about half a medium potato)	Amount	% DV
Potassium	535 mg	11%
Vitamin C	9.6 mg	11%
Vitamin B6	0.31 mg	18%
Fibre	2.2 g	8%
Carbohydrate	21 g	8%
Protein	2.5 g	5%

Source: USDA FoodData Central.Percent Daily Values are based on adult reference intakes. The bars stop at 100%; the numbers do not.

Why it works

Potassium is the mineral that balances sodium, and most men eat a fraction of the 4,700 mg a day the body was built for. Two potatoes cover half of it. Vitamin C from potatoes was what kept Irish and Andean populations free of scurvy through winters without fruit.

Grains are seeds, and seeds defend themselves — phytate binds minerals, lectins irritate the gut, and their fat is polyunsaturated. A tuber is a storage organ with none of that. That is the whole argument for potato over bread.

How much, how often

1–2 potatoes
Daily, as the starch
Covers a third to a half of the day's potassium with clean carbohydrate.
Tallow or butter
Never seed oil
The fat is what decides whether a potato is good food.

How to buy and prepare it

Russets for baking and roasting — dry, fluffy flesh. Yukon Gold and other waxy yellows for boiling and pan-frying. Avoid any with green skin or sprouts; the green is solanine and is bitter and mildly toxic, so cut it away deeply or discard the potato.

Organic is worth it for potatoes; they are on the high-residue lists most years and the skin is the best part.

Bake whole at 200°C / 400°F for an hour and split open with butter and salt. Roast chunks in hot tallow — parboil first, rough up the edges, then 40 minutes at 220°C — for the tallow roast potatoes in the guide. Boil new potatoes in well-salted water and finish with butter. Never fry in seed oil; that is the only bad potato.

Cool, dark and dry — a cupboard, not the fridge, where the starch turns to sugar and the potato browns badly when cooked. Keep them away from onions. Cooked potatoes keep four days refrigerated and improve as resistant starch forms.