By Emma Spencer, Science & Technology Reporter

There’s a reason Harvard no longer maintains its stellar reputation for scholarship. To many employers and Americans in general, the once-preeminent institution looks much more like an out-of-touch ivory tower filled with academics who have lost touch not only with most of the rest of the country, but with reality as well.

Harvard has already lost its partnership with the military. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended fellowships and graduate-level training programs there, citing the university’s focus on woke ideology over effective real-world military strategies. Gender norms, Republicans, “the patriarchy,” and Israel have all drawn Harvard’s ire in recent years. Now the academics at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health appear to have a new enemy: the humble potato.

On its Nutrition Source page, Harvard’s experts argue that potatoes should not even count as a vegetable on their Healthy Eating Plate. They suggest treating the spud more like bread, and not the good kind either, calling the potato out for its ostensible high glycemic load and links to blood sugar spikes.

So are potatoes bad for you? Did generations get it wrong when they used the potato as the basis of a filling, sustaining diet? What about entire nations like Ireland, Belarus, Russia, and Germany that made the potato a main dietary staple, helping people survive hard times thanks to its high calorie and solid nutrition profile? Did the professors just rewrite history?

Harvard’s critique leans heavily on preparation. The academics point to studies showing French fries are linked to increased type 2 diabetes risk. One 2006 analysis of more than 84,000 nurses tied about one potato a day to a 14 percent higher risk, with fries at 2-3 servings a week jumping to 21 percent. A 2016 study across three large cohorts found 7 or more servings a week associated with a 33 percent higher diabetes risk, much of it from fries. A newer 2025 study of over 200,000 people said three weekly servings of fries raised diabetes risk by 20 percent. Baked, boiled, or mashed showed weaker or no significant link in some data.

The professors hammer the deep-fried version as if that negates the potato itself. Any food can be made unhealthy if you bathe it in enough oil, butter, sugar, or heavy sauces. Take broccoli, the star of Harvard’s plate. Plain steamed broccoli is low-calorie, but throw it in a typical Asian stir-fry or beef-and-broccoli takeout and it swims in soy sauce loaded with sodium, added sugar, and oil. Those versions pack hundreds of extra calories and blood-pressure-spiking salt that a plain baked potato never touches. You could deep-fry broccoli too and watch the “healthy” label disappear.

The facts on the potato tell a different story. A medium baked potato with the skin on has about 110 calories, zero fat (unless you add it), 3 grams of protein (higher than most vegetables), 2 grams of fiber, 620 mg of potassium (more than a banana and 15 percent of daily needs), 27 mg of vitamin C (nearly half what most adults need), plus B6 and other nutrients. California farmers still grow millions of hundredweights of fresh-market potatoes on about 21,000 acres, supporting local agriculture in a state that leads the nation in farm output. It grows in tough soil where other crops struggle, yields heavily per acre, and stays cheap at the store, making potatoes exactly the kind of practical food that feeds working families in Sacramento without breaking the bank.

History backs it up. Before the Irish Great Famine, rural families often ate 10 to 14 pounds of potatoes a day, supplemented with a little milk or butter. That monotonous diet provided calories, vitamin C to prevent scurvy, potassium, and enough protein to keep people going. One acre could feed a family of eight. Similar stories played out in Russia, Belarus, and parts of Germany and Eastern Europe, where the hardy tuber became “the second bread” through harsh winters and tough economies. Belarus still leads the world in per-capita potato consumption.

Practical prep makes a difference too. Cook a potato, cool it overnight in the fridge (think potato salad), then reheat it. That process creates resistant starch that acts more like fiber, blunts the blood sugar spike, and may help with satiety and gut health. Studies show this cooled-then-reheated method lowers the glycemic impact compared to eating it hot right after cooking.

Harvard does in its magnanimity acknowledge you can eat a potato occasionally — up to 3 times a week — if you otherwise follow their “Healthy Eating Plate” guideline. So gracious of them. Or you could simply chalk up the whole thing to being yet another example of why Pete Hegseth fired these same professors for having lost touch with the real world.

Or in other words, take it with a grain of salt and then toss that grain of salt on a baked potato.