I was browsing through the USDA Food Search system for data on various foods, when I noticed they include how much of a food is water. What really perplexed me is how 81.1 grams out of 100g of russet potato is water… when 88.1g of 100g of milk is also stated as water.
Obviously a potato isn’t liquid like milk, and my intuition would say that 100g of potatoes seem far denser and “drier” than 100g of milk. I mean can you imagine sating your thirst with just solid potatoes, as opposed to say a glass of milk?
But yet I can’t make sense of why one is solid and the other is liquid when they’re nearly the same in water content, or why one would seem to sate thirst more.
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Bonus question: does this mean you poop about as much from 100g of milk as you would from 100g of, potatoes? I guess you could blend the potatoes…
In: 7
Plants are made up of cells, with a tough membrane around them which holds the cell contents, which are mainly water. The cells are all linked together, which holds the water still.
If you mash a raw potato, you will see all the water come out as you break the cell walls. In fact, even when you cut it a bit, you see this happen on the cells that you’ve cut.
In milk, the water is freely floating between molecules of fat and protein, so there is nothing to hold it still.
Bonus question: You will poo out more from a potato. This is because you wee out most of the water, keep proteins and fats, and mainly poo out material which is not digestible (roughage). The cell walls of potatoes and other plants are made from cellulose, which we can’t digest, so we poo it out.
That is partially why plants (fruit and vegetables) are good for us. Because they contain plenty of roughage, which helps food move through our gut and out the other end, helping to prevent diseases like colon cancer.
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