Nutritional information:
Potatoes are a great source of low fat energy in the diet. They provide vitamin C, Folic Acid, B vitamins, potassium, magnesium, iron and zinc as well. They are often undervalued in the diet because they are not included in 5 ADAY but a recent review by the British Nutrition Foundation concluded that potatoes can help consumers meet their daily requirement of some important micro nutrients, particularly potassium. Purple Majesty adds a powerful purple punch to the potato’s already strong nutritional credentials.
Purple Majesty contains an abundance of natural plant nutrients called polyphenols. Polyphenols are often connected to the variety of colours in fruits and vegetables. Research has suggested that these plant compounds can be beneficial in decreasing the risk of cardio vascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases but more human studies are needed.
The deep purple colour in Purple Majesty is due to a combination of polyphenols called anthocyanins. These are the same compounds that are responsible for the purple colours in blueberries, black currants, red cabbage, grape juice and red wine.
It is important to eat a rainbow of colours in our daily diet to ensure that we are incorporating the most beneficial nutrients to keep us healthy.
Other sources of purple like berries can be seasonal and expensive. Albert Bartlett Purple Majesty makes eating your daily purple so much easier.
Antioxidants and health properties:
Purple Majesty is abundant in antioxidants which are naturally found in certain foods. It is widely thought that antioxidants help the body’s cells to cope with the damaging effects of unstable molecules called free radicals.
Exposure to free radicals results from external factors like pollution, UV rays and cigarette smoke. The body also produces free radicals as part of its normal metabolic functions like digestion and exercise.
An abundance of unchecked free radicals can set off serious chain reactions causing damage to cells. Free radicals may play a part in cancer, heart disease, stroke and other diseases of aging.
Much of the research in this area is from in- vitro and animal studies and more needs to be done to validate these theories in human studies.
Reference:
British Nutrition Foundation
An Overview of the role of Potatoes in the UK diet. E Weichselbaum . 2010 British Nutrition Foundation Nutrition Bulletin, 35,195-206
Antioxidant capacity, Health and Nutrition studies under way:
Work to measure the antioxidant capacity AOC or “power” has been undertaken at the Scottish Crop Research Institute. There are several different methods of measuring total antioxidant capacity. The different measures give different values and work between laboratories cannot easily be compared. We have used FRAP and TEAC analysis to compare the AOC of Purple Majesty to other conventional white and red skinned potatoes and to other well known sources of purple AOC in the diet, raspberries, blueberries and red cabbage. This work will be ongoing as we investigate the effects of storage and growing conditions in coming seasons but they have already demonstrated that Purple Majesty has substantially higher AOC – at least 9 times higher – than conventional potatoes.
A provisional report of a wider study being undertaken by the Scottish Crop Research Institute is available below
We are also working with Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh to undertake further nutritional analysis, bioavailability studies and human studies investigating the impact of eating the purple potatoes on lowering healthy volunteers’ risk of coronary heart disease. Initial work was presented at the Nutrition Society Summer Conference Edinburgh 2010. The work will also be presented at the first International conference on Functional Foods in Oxford ( 25th – 26th November 2010)