Celebrate Hanukkah with Traditional Potato Pancakes

Attention low-carbors: Give up your carbohydrate restrictions for a day or two (or eight, if you dare) and enjoy the main meal of Hanukkah-piles of potatoes (combined with eggs, flour and brown sugar) and then sizzled in a lot of oil and finally smothered in apple sauce. Sound good?

It is good. However, no one would say that traditional latkes make a healthy meal. Some people would go so far as to say that potatoes themselves are not good to eat for maintaining a low fat-body index. But that seems to be a myth. The latest facts indicate that potatoes are a desirable part of anyone's diet-even if they are trying to lose weight.

Starch, Please

It all comes down to how you eat a potato.

A plain, medium baked or broiled potato is about 120 calories. It tastes good--and it is good for you. Like other starchy vegetables, potatoes are an excellent source of potassium, vitamin C, vitamin B6, niacin and iron, according to the College of Agricultural Sciences. If you eat the skin--and you should--potatoes offer lots of fiber and several trace minerals that we need. And the best news is that a plain potato is virtually fat free.

But, eat potatoes in the form of chips, fries, hash browns, shoestrings or dehydrated and frozen types, and you add on many extra calories, fat and sodium--and lose valuable nutrients in the processing.

The calories and carbohydrates will climb if you take a plain potato and adorn it with butter or stuff it with cheese. That's the kind you get fat from. And this is often the case when you eat out. But you can still manage the calories.

"Your best bet," says Pat Kendall, Ph.D., R.D., a nutritionist from Colorado State University, "is to order your potato plain, then add your own toppings at the salad bar. Start with chopped tomatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and sprouts, then add a small amount of cottage cheese or low-calorie dressing to create a stuffed potato with lots of flavor and color, but little fat." And this is something you should try at home.

"Sweet"

Fresh "white" potatoes include russet, round white, long white and round red. There are even blue and purple potatoes, originally from South America, which have a slightly nutty taste. Vary the type of potato for different tastes or textures.

The good news is the sweet potato and its cousin the yam, both known as yellow-flesh potatoes, are delicious, nutritious and low-fat-just like the white variety. A four-ounce sweet potato has about 140 calories--only slightly more than a white potato.

These potatoes contain large amounts of carotene and other carotenoids which give them exceptional anti-cancer properties-and are strongly recommended to smokers for these reasons. Sweet potatoes contain lots of vitamin A, vitamin C and vitamin E which are also known to help in the prevention of some cancers.

So on Hanukkah, enjoy the latkes the way they are in all their oily glory. And remember, you can't go wrong with potatoes--unless you spell one potato with an "e."

Have a Happy Hanukkah.

Sources:

Pat Kendall, Ph.D., R.D., nutritionist, Colorado State University

College of Agricultural Sciences

This article was originally published in Jewish Family & Life!