Time to put this BS myth to bed once and for all

Read time: 5 minutes

If the coaching career goes tits up, I can always go into the decorating business 😂

I'm in the middle of packing all my crap up and leaving Barcelona, which involves me tearing down and repairing my lovely office, which you've most likely seen in some of my content.

There are numerous advantages to being 6 feet 5, and this picture paints the clearest example of one of them. You see what I did there 😉

Oh, and please don't judge the choice of outfit. Those dodgy-looking swimming shorts and wife-beater are headed for the recycling bin.

Again, one of the pros of moving is the sheer amount of crap you get rid of, which for me includes the retirement of my last few pairs of skinny jeans. Not a moment too soon, I hear some of you say 😂

Anyway, talking of binning crap you don't need, I'm about to throw out some trash that has been plaguing the health and fitness space for decades.

I guarantee that what you're about to read is going to be music to your ears, so let's get stuck into it...

Right, I need you to cast your mind back to your last 'diet'.

At some point, you likely reduced your carbs, which might have involved cutting out white rice or potatoes.

Absolute sacrilege for an Irishman! That is, cutting out the potatoes.

You probably did so because someone, somewhere, told you they were bad.

Maybe it was a fitness influencer. Maybe it was a magazine. Maybe it was someone at the gym who looked confident enough that you just believed them.

And that belief has been sitting in your head ever since.

Now, this wasn't on my agenda for newsletter topics, but I've had multiple clients in the last couple of weeks be genuinely shocked when I told them the truth about these foods.

The myth

The idea goes something like this ⤵

• White rice and white potatoes are high on the glycemic index.
• High GI foods spike your blood sugar.
• Blood sugar spikes cause insulin release.
• Insulin causes fat storage.

Therefore, white rice and white potatoes make you fat.

It sounds logical, right?

It's also, in most practical contexts, utter nonsense.

Let me explain why.

The glycemic index measures how quickly a food raises blood sugar, with pure table sugar being right at the top of the index, but here's the catch.

This index measures foods eaten alone, in standardised lab conditions, in isolation.

Nobody eats a bowl of plain white rice and nothing else. Not if they're trying to live a healthy life.

But the moment you add protein, fat, fibre, or vegetables to a meal, which is what every 'normal human' does, the glycemic response drops significantly.

The whole meal context changes the picture completely.

Research published in Advances in Nutrition concluded that applying the glycemic index in isolation to judge foods like potatoes has led to dietary guidance that is premature and potentially counterproductive (1).

In other words, the scientists are saying what I've been saying to clients for years.

The GI number on its own tells you very little about how a food behaves inside an actual meal, and that people who paint potatoes as the devil are, in fact, themselves the devil!

What about fat storage?

Here's the part that trips people up.

Yes, insulin is involved in fat storage, but insulin is also the hormone that drives nutrients into your muscle cells after training.

There's a reason why a ton of bodybuilders inject themselves with insulin post-workout, and yes, I actually knew some lads back in Ireland who were crazy (stupid) enough to do it.

But it's not the villain it's been made out to be.

Fat is stored when you consistently eat more calories than your body burns.

That's it. Biology lesson over.

You could eat nothing but low-GI foods and still gain body fat if you're in a calorie surplus, but you could eat white rice every single day and lose body fat if you're in a calorie deficit.

And guess who does that? 😏

This guy does 👍🏻

I eat white rice almost daily, and I always will. As far as foods go, I think white basmati rice is a superfood. Yes, it may not have the nutrient profile of an egg, but pound-for-pound, it's right up there for what it delivers.

I want you to remember something. The source of your carbohydrates matters far less than the total amount of food you're eating.

Oh, no, Mark, you can't say that.

As a very proud Irishman, I'm obviously very protective of a few things:

1. Potatoes
2. Guinness
3. Cadbury's chocolate that is made with Irish milk

So, when I hear people bad-mouthing a national treasure, I can't stand back and do nothing about it.

The white potato is possibly the most unfairly maligned food in the history of nutrition.

People ditch them during fat loss phases as if they're somehow dangerous.

Meanwhile, they're replacing them with foods that are worse for satiety, higher in calories, and less nutritious.

A satiety index study conducted at the University of Sydney tested 38 common foods and found that boiled potatoes produced the highest satiety score of all, more than seven times higher than the lowest-scoring food (2).

Seven times! That's a big win for team spuds 🥔

The potato was number one. Not chicken. Not eggs. Not brown rice.

The humble boiled potato.

A randomised controlled trial found that a diet high in white potatoes produced significant reductions in body weight and BMI, and contrary to what studies had suggested, potatoes did not adversely affect the glycemic response (3).

That's a real trial, with real participants and real results.

And white rice?

White rice has been eaten as a dietary staple by billions of people for thousands of years.

Japan. China. South Korea. India. These are populations with historically low rates of obesity. They're not avoiding white rice. They're eating it daily, in significant quantities, and doing just fine.

Research observing obesity rates across countries found that the prevalence of obesity was significantly lower in countries with higher rice consumption, even when controlling for lifestyle and socioeconomic factors.

The idea that white rice is uniquely fattening doesn't hold up when you look at the populations eating the most of it.

There is also a genuinely useful trick if you want to reduce the glycemic impact of white rice further. Cook it, cool it in the fridge overnight, then reheat it. Research has shown this process increases resistant starch content, which meaningfully lowers the glycemic response compared to freshly cooked rice.

I only found this out recently, but as someone who batch cooks his rice, this is music to my ears.

Does this mean you need to do this? No. But it's a handy tool if you want one.

While we're here, let's address the elephant in the room.

Carbohydrates as a whole have had an absolutely terrible PR run over the last couple of decades.

Low carb. No carb. Keto. Carnivore.

Every few years, a new version of the same story gets repackaged and sold to people who are desperate to lose weight and willing to believe that one specific macronutrient is the root of all their problems.

It's NEVER that simple.

Carbohydrates are your body's preferred energy source. Your brain runs almost exclusively on glucose. Your muscles rely on glycogen, which comes from carbohydrates, to perform during training.

Cutting them out entirely isn't some metabolic hack. For most people, it's just unnecessary misery.

Here's a rule of thumb I give to clients that has served them well.

Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Rice. Oats. Lentils. Chickpeas. Quinoa. Fruit. Root vegetables. The list goes on.

These are whole food carbohydrates. They come with fibre, vitamins, minerals, and water. They digest at a reasonable pace. They fill you up. They fuel your training. They support your gut health.

None of them are making you fat.

The carbohydrates that genuinely deserve scrutiny are the ones that have been heavily processed, stripped of fibre, and loaded with sugar, salt, or fat to make them hyper-palatable and hard to put down.

Biscuits. Crisps. Sugary cereals. Your standard supermarket loaf that has more additives in it than a chemistry textbook.

That last one is worth a specific mention. Most commercially produced white bread is not just refined, it's loaded with added sugars and processed to the point where it barely resembles real food.

I saw a video on TikTok that went viral at the start of the year, showing someone holding a slice of American bread underneath a running tap of water for well over a minute without the bread losing ANY of its shape whatsoever. God only knows what type of chemicals are in that thing 😂

That's a very different beast from something like a good sourdough, which is slow-fermented, far more digestible, and in a completely different nutritional category.

The bread isn't always the problem. What's been done to it usually is.

The issue with ultra-processed carbohydrates isn't purely that they're carbohydrates. It's that they're engineered to be easy to overconsume, they offer minimal satiety, and they displace the more nutritious food that should be on your plate.

That's a very different conversation from white rice or a glorious potato.

One of the most consistent findings in nutrition research is that diets built around whole, minimally processed foods, regardless of the carbohydrate content, tend to support healthy body weight, better metabolic markers, and long-term adherence.

Because they're not a diet...

They're just food.

Real food.

The kind that has existed long before anyone invented a macronutrient ratio to argue about on the internet.

So next time someone tells you carbs are bad, ask them which carbs, because there's a world of difference between a bowl of oats with berries and a bag of Haribo.

It's rarely the rice.

It's rarely the potato.

It's the butter, the oil, the cream, the cheese, and the sauces they're served with.

It's the portion sizes. It's the overall calorie intake across the day.

A jacket potato is roughly 130 calories, but loaded with cheese, butter, and full-fat sour cream, that same jacket potato becomes 500+ calories.

Is the potato the problem there?

No.

The potato is just the vehicle.

A god damn magnificent vehicle at that.

White rice and white potatoes are inexpensive, easy to prepare, genuinely filling, low in fat, decent sources of nutrients, and completely compatible with fat loss when portioned correctly.

In a world full of hate and wars, they are not your enemy.

If you enjoy them, eat them. Pair them with a good protein source, add some vegetables, manage your overall calorie intake, and get on with your life.

The fitness industry has a long history of taking perfectly reasonable foods and demonising them to sell you something else.

Don't fall for it.

Oh, and before I go, none of this means white rice and white potatoes are nutritionally superior to brown rice or sweet potatoes.

They're not.

Brown rice has more fibre and micronutrients, but in my opinion, it tastes disgustiing. Sweet potatoes have a stronger micronutrient profile. If those are available to you and you enjoy them, great.

But if you prefer white rice or white potatoes, or they're more affordable, more convenient, or just what you grew up eating, there is no reason to cut them out.

Try telling my 86-year-old Irish grandad that sweet potatoes might be nutritionally more beneficial for him, go on, I dare you 😂

The best diet is the one you can actually stick to.

And eliminating foods you enjoy based on bad information is not a recipe for long-term success.

As always, if you've got a question on anything I've covered today, just hit reply.

And if you've been told something about food that doesn't quite sit right with you, ask me. That's what I'm here for.

Chat soon.

Quote for the day

Mark Gray

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References
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1. St-Onge, Marie-Pierre. “Sleep and Energy Balance: Mechanisms Linking Sleep Loss to Obesity Risk.” Current Nutrition Reports, vol. 11, no. 4, 2022, pp. 519–526.
2. Kripke, Daniel F., et al. “Self-Reported Sleep Duration as a Predictor of Mortality: A Prospective Study of 1.1 Million Adults.” Archives of General Psychiatry, vol. 59, no. 2, 2002.
3. Chastin, Sebastien F. M., et al. “The SOS-Framework (Systems of Sedentary Behaviours): A Framework for Understanding Sedentary Behaviour.” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, vol. 12, 2015, article 68.

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any guidance related to training, nutrition, supplementation, or lifestyle is general in nature and not a substitute for personalised medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your health routine.