The following is an excerpt from Author Michael Easter’s 2% Newsletter:

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If there’s one food you should overeat today, it’s probably potatoes. The humble potato is the original superfood, and you should consider eating more potatoes beyond Thanksgiving. This week’s 2% newsletter explains why.

Science of the Potato

A Danish physician named Mikkel Hindhede proved you could survive on potatoes alone in the early 1900s. He had three laborers eat nothing but spuds with a dollop of margarine for 309 days.

Five doctors examined the men afterward and determined they were all in excellent health. One participant was described as “a strong, solid, athletic-looking figure, all of whose muscles are well-developed, and without excess fat.”

Hindhede’s work gave scientific legitimacy to what other cultures had long known: Eating mostly potatoes will keep a person strong and healthy. The Incans noticed this fact thousands of years earlier. Irish farmers experienced it in the 1800s. A recent study in the journal Nutrition discovered that the Aymara people of the Andes and Altiplano have ten times fewer incidences of pre-diabetes compared to Americans.

“Potatoes are a surprisingly nutritionally complete food,” the nutrition researcher Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D., told me. The USDA reports that a medium potato contains about 170 calories, 5 grams of protein, 39 grams of carbs, and nearly every vitamin and mineral your body needs. Potatoes have more than double the potassium of a medium banana and a quarter the vitamin C of an orange.

“Importantly, they have complete protein, a distribution of essential amino acids that’s similar to animal proteins,” said Guyenet. We don’t think of potatoes as “high protein.” But you could eat only potatoes and meet the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of protein.

Cost-Effective Nutrition

Potatoes contain more calories than most other vegetables. But this is actually a feature rather than a bug.

They’re in a sweet spot where they can give us enough calories to survive (try surviving on broccoli and lettuce alone) but not so many that we overeat.

Potatoes have long been associated with fullness, and scientific data backs up that observation. A study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the satiety index—a measure of how full a food makes you feel—of common foods and discovered that plain potatoes reign supreme. They registered 50 percent more filling than their nearest competitor, fish, and seven times more filling than croissants, which ranked dead last. This study suggests you’d have to eat seven croissants—roughly 1200 calories—to experience the same fullness you’d get from one potato.

That property combined with their sweet-spot calorie concentration makes potatoes an ideal weight-loss food. You’ll feel fuller on fewer calories, making you less likely to overeat, Guyenet told me. You also might save money if you start eating more potatoes: They’re the cheapest vegetable.

Where Good Potatoes Go Bad

If you’ve heard that potatoes are unhealthy, keep in mind the problem isn’t the potatoes. The problem is us and what we do with them. We cut them into little sticks or paper-thin wafers, then bathe them in 365-degree oil (A third of America’s potatoes become french fries). We boil them, then mash them with far too much butter and cream. (For the record, I’m 100% on board with too much butter and cream on Thanksgiving … but consider taking it easy on that stuff after the holiday.)

“If you look at nonindustrial agricultural societies around the world who are lean and don’t have metabolic or cardiovascular disease, they don’t fry or pump up their carbs like potatoes with fats,” said Guyenet. “Most of their plate is a plain starch—whether it’s potatoes, rice, sweet potatoes, or cassava—and the rest is a smaller quantity of something more exciting, like a meat with sauce and vegetables.”

If you’re worried about all those carbs, don’t be. The weight of scientific evidence suggests that carbs don’t make you fat. Overeating them does. And that, as the food satiety index study found, is hard to do with plain old potatoes.

For fitness, potatoes are a weird-but-good option. That’s thanks to their relatively high carb content, minerals, and amino acid profile. In the 2% Newsletter from two weeks ago, I explained how I once spoke with a professional ultrarunner who runs with a plastic bag of salty mashed potatoes. When he needs mid-run fuel, he’ll bite a corner from the bag and squeeze the potatoes into his mouth. They’re packed with naturally occurring electrolytes and certainly beat some sour-apple-flavored sugar goo.

Enjoy your potatoes today. And hopefully more days this year. And they don’t have to be bland to remain healthy. Surviving on only white potatoes is doable, but it’s not optimal in the long run. Potatoes lack two vitamins: A and B12. This is why that Dutch researcher in the 1800s gave those five men margarine with their potatoes. It’s also why most potato-dependent cultures eat them with a bit of greens or carrots and a small amount of animal products, like butter, milk, eggs, or meat. So feel free to add a bit of butter or sour cream.

Growing up, I’d always heard of basic, unexciting men referred to as “a ‘meat and potatoes’ kind of guy.” But the more I learn about potatoes, I’m OK with that designation. Because if I just throw some greens or carrots into the mix, I’ll be perfect.

The following is an excerpt from Author Michael Easter’s 2% Newsletter:

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I was recently at an REI when I came upon the store’s sports nutrition section. Picture four aisles packed with all kinds of bars and powders and gels emblazoned with all sorts of descriptors and claims about “energy” and “performance.” Sports nutrition is a $43 billion industry. But most research suggests that popular performance foods aren’t any better at improving exercise performance than many of the everyday foods you probably have in your pantry right now.

Today we’ll cover four rules that can help you think smarter about sports nutrition. They'll help you figure out the best food for your next long run, ruck, hike, or bike ride.

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For exercise efforts lasting between two and four hours, most studies suggest that you should just take in water, a simple processed carbohydrate like sugar, and maybe some salt. That’s according to Jose Antonio, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. This research is why most sports nutrition products are basically just candy dressed up with salt and vitamins and marketing language.

For example, Honey Stinger Waffles took a classic Dutch cookie, called a stroopwafel, added some salt to it, and sold it in packaging that says something or other about “fuel to push harder and farther.” Clif, Boba, and Pro Bars are all basically just a weird oatmeal cookie mechanically compressed into a rectangle. “Hydration mixes” are essentially powdered Kool-Aid with extra salt. Those gel packet things are, well, they’re in a world of their own.

There isn’t much scientific evidence (that the sports nutrition industry hasn’t paid for) that suggests sports nutrition products are any better for performance than eating “normal” food. For example, one study found that cyclists performed just as well when they fueled an intense ride with raisins compared to sports gels. Another study found that any liquid with salt in it can hydrate us well—even pickle juice. All foods, really, are “energy foods” because they contain energy in the form of calories.

Sports nutrition bars and gels are convenient, which is nice. But because they probably don’t give us a unique boost in performance and usually taste somewhere between a candy bar leftover from Halloween 2019 and a flip-flop, I’ve found an option I like far more.

My favorite endurance food was first created in 1901. That year the food writer Julia David Chandler announced a new recipe in the Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics. She wrote:

“Try making sandwiches…of three very thin layers of bread and two of filling, one of peanut paste, whatever brand you prefer, and currant or crab-apple jelly for the other. The combination is delicious.”

Chandler was on to something. But it wasn’t until World War II that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich became an American classic. All three ingredients were adopted by the U.S. military; soldier rations included bread, Welch’s concord grape jelly, and canned peanut butter.

The PB&J works well as exercise fuel. But it’s not unique. Many of your favorite foods can work as fuel for your next big exercise session. The following four rules for endurance nutrition can guide you into finding your own perfect food for your next long run, ruck, hike, or bike ride.

Rule 1: It should be easy to digest

In everyday life, it’s probably healthier to limit ultraprocessed foods that contain ingredients like added sugar and refined flour. But, somewhat counterintuitively, ultraprocessed foods work best for fueling exercise.

When you exercise hard, your body prioritizes powering your muscles and puts processes like digestion on the back burner. That helps you run or ruck or ride or hike faster, but it also gives your gut fewer resources to extract energy from food inside it.

Ultraprocessed foods have been processed beforehand, so breaking them down takes minimal effort by your stomach. If a food doesn’t require much digestion, your body can immediately start to absorb and use the nutrients from it, and that’s going to improve your performance more than anything. (This is exactly why most sports nutrition products are basically just sugar and other easy-to-digest components.)

Foods that are unprocessed—i.e., “whole” foods—are generally harder to draw energy from. During exercise, they end up sitting in your stomach because your body isn’t devoting resources to digesting hard-to-digest foods. This can cause an upset stomach.

A standard PB&J—white bread, jam, smooth PB—is highly processed. And it has a couple of other qualities that make it ideal. Which brings us to Rule 2 …

Rule 2: It should be carby and salty

A basic PB&J contains about 350 calories and 16, 45, and 11 grams of fat, carbs, and protein, respectively.

That’s roughly equivalent to a ProBar (an energy bar that occupied a lot of space on the REI shelf) with its 380 calories, 20 grams of fat, 43 grams of carbohydrates, and 11 grams of protein.

Your body can use and process carbs quicker than fats or proteins. So, in general, most people will do best fueling a tough endurance workout with a snack that is mostly carbohydrates and relatively lower in fat and protein.

The PB&J is also a bit salty. That delivers electrolytes, which we lose when we sweat. The sandwich, surprisingly, contains more vitamins than many energy bars. White bread is fortified with all sorts of vitamins and minerals humans need to thrive (the government started fortifying staple foods in the 1920s to reduce malnutrition and it was and still is one of the greatest public health campaigns ever.)

If you want to know how much you should eat on a hike or run, a good formula goes like this:

Take your body weight, multiply it by 0.6, then multiply it by your mileage. Only use this for efforts over five miles (any shorter and you’ll be fine with whatever you last ate). So, for example, let’s say I was planning to do a 10-mile hike and I weighed 150 pounds.

I’d take my weight of 150 and multiply it by 0.6. That would give me 90. Then I’d take 90 and multiply it by 10, my mileage. That would give me 900 calories. That’s how much I’d want to eat to fully replace my lost calories. (Note: If I was trying to lose weight, I’d probably want to eat less than 900 to help put me into a caloric deficit).

I learned that formula from Trevor Kashey. He was featured in my book, The Comfort Crisis. He’s used that formula with champion endurance athletes. (He’s also the best if you need personal nutrition coaching.)

Rule 3: It should taste good

A few years back, I did a 24-hour unsupported endurance event. An exercise physiologist estimated I’d burn 15,000 calories during the effort. Trying to fill even a fraction of that gap with energy bars sounded nearly as grueling as the competition itself.

Enter the PB&J. I made hulking 700-calorie, 30-gram protein sandwiches. While my fellow competitors choked down their dry, saccharine performance bars and gels, I enjoyed a childhood staple.

Eating a food you enjoy during a hard hike or run can give you a nice psychological tailwind. This is why some of the best endurance athletes in the world lean on normal foods. Fanta orange soda and paninis, for example, are a favorite of Tour de France riders during the race.

I ate my final sandwich at the end of the event. My body was so in need of calories that the sandwich felt like one of the great meals of my life. I can promise you that no one has ever said, “Wow, this Tri-Berry Gu gel is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.”

Rule 4: It should be affordable

Those aforementioned 700-calorie PB&Js I made for that long endurance event cost about a quarter each. The average energy bar is between six to 15 times more expensive per calorie. I would have spent three figures packing food for my 24-hour event.

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All in all, it’s not that sports nutrition foods are “bad.” Food is food. But if you explore a bit, you might find options out there that are simpler, cheaper, tastier, and more accessible.

If you’ve got a wacky food you love eating on long runs or hikes, send it my way. I’d love to hear about it. I once met a champion ultrarunner who would eat mashed potatoes during his races. “I keep a Ziplock of them in my pocket then bite off a corner of the bag and squeeze them into my mouth,” he told me.

Fried Eggs, Roasted Potatoes (re-heated), Avocado, Smoked Salmon

“Honestly, seriously, you don’t know what to do about food? Here is an idea: Eat like anadult. Stop eating fast food, stop eating kid’s cereal, knock it off with all the sweets andcomfort foods whenever your favorite show is not on when you want it on, ease up onthe snacking and— don’t act like you don’t know this— eat vegetables and fruits more.Really, how difficult is this? Stop with the whining. Stop with the excuses. Act like anadult and stop eating like a television commercial. Grow up.” – Dan John

The amount of information published daily on nutrition and different dietary options can make eating healthy feel like a daunting task. The number of choices is overwhelming, and oftentimes conflicting in their prescriptions. How do we sort through the noise and find an effective approach to eating that is both nourishing and sustainable? Here’s a starting point, in the words of Dan John: Eat like an adult!  

What does eating like an adult look like you ask? Meat and seafood, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some starch, little to no sugar. Foods from these categories should make up the bulk of your meals throughout the week, in whatever combinations and quantities you prefer. While we have unlimited options and the autonomy to eat whatever we please, it’s important that we have the discipline to not do just that. We need to establish our own personal “diet” that meets our needs and goals. Diet in this case does not refer to the modern connotation of a trendy short term plan/cleanse/detox that will help you “get ripped in 30 days”, which works wonders until the moment you stop doing it. Instead, we’re referring to the actual root of the word, which means “way of living.” If your “diet” is simply a series of unrelated short term solutions, it’s inherently not a diet. What we need instead is a logical framework that can be used as a lens through which we can evaluate food choices to better determine whether or not they align with our principles, and make  decisions from there. 

Let’s take a look at breakfast for example. Do you consistently eat it? If so, what do you typically eat? If your breakfast involves cereal or some other product whose spokesperson is a cartoon character or target consumer audience is a 6 year old, we’ve got some room for improvement. If you regularly rush out the door and skip breakfast or grab something convenient en route, the same goes for you. Breakfast doesn’t need to be time consuming nor complicated to make, and in many case can be prepared the night before and simple reheated or taken to go in the morning. Think protein shakes, overnight oats, leftovers, etc. However, when we start the day with sugary cereal, a bagel, etc., we’re putting ourselves at an immediate disadvantage. Good blood sugar maintenance (specifically not constantly spiking it) is a marker for both long term health, and short term wellness. When we eat foods that are satiating (protein, fat, low GI carbs), we tend to stay comfortably full longer and more easily avoid the pitfalls of snacking that often result from rapid blood sugar drops and the resultant food cravings for quick calories. Additionally, what we eat either empowers of hinders our performance in the gym. Viewing food as fuel can be a helpful filter to prioritize various food choices, namely asking ourselves if a particular item will positively or negatively effect the quality of our workout that day. Fortunately, there is significant overlap in food choices and decision making whether we are eating for better body composition, general wellness, or improved performance. 

When we regularly eat sugar or refined grains to start the day, the cumulative effects of these choices will very likely be reflected in both our cognitive and physical energy levels as well as our waistbands. Instead, let’s strive to regularly fuel up in the morning with protein, fat, and carbs from convenient and enjoyable sources so that we can thrive daily in all areas that matter.