Hail the white veggies

It is time to give a shout out to white vegetables. The usual recommendation to eat richly colored fruits and vegetables ignores nutritious and pale palette-pleasing produce.

A scientific roundtable at Purdue University addressed this topic during the session, “White Vegetables: A Forgotten Source of Nutrients.”

There are colorless healthy nutrients such as potassium, fiber and vitamins. The list of healthy whites includes potatoes, cauliflower, turnip, onions, mushrooms and kohlrabi to name a few.

Here are a few worth noting:

• White Potato with Skin: A medium potato has more potassium than a banana and 45 percent of recommended daily vitamin C. Scientists from the Agricultural Research Service using new analytical methods have found that the healthy phenolic content of white potatoes matched broccoli, spinach and brussel sprouts.

Potatoes also contain resistant starch, which benefits colon health, blood sugar and hunger. Baking a potato provides significantly more resistant starch than boiling. All this for 110 calories.

This story was originally published May 30, 2013 at 11:04 AM with the headline "Hail the white veggies."