Here’s What Happened When One Man Ate Only Potatoes For An Entire Year

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If you could choose only one type of food to consume for a full 365 days, what would it be? For an Australian man named Andrew Taylor, it was potatoes. And while this beyond-restrictive diet plan will never be recommended by any nutritionist we’ve met, it was a true game-changer for him in a multitude of ways.

Before this eccentric experiment, Taylor considered himself to be a genuine food addict. Thoughts of food consistently ruled his life and left little room in his mind for much else. After years of indulging his addiction and remaining pretty inactive, he realized he reached his heaviest weight ever. So between constantly struggling to control his food intake and lacking energy or drive for other components of life, he knew it was time to make a change.

Enter the potato diet challenge.

Unfortunately, unlike many other addictions, you can’t just go cold turkey on food. You obviously need calories to live, so Taylor decided to stick to one nutritious food and eat only that for a full year with the hopes of making food a much smaller focus in his day-to-day life. After extensive research, he chose the potato.

Plenty of groups throughout history have subsisted primarily on potatoes for extended periods of time, such as Irish farmers before the horrible potato famine. For a starchy vegetable, they are a good source of protein and fiber while keeping sugar in check. And when you eat them with the skin on, you get a nice boost of potassium, vitamin C, folate and vitamin B6. They’re also incredibly inexpensive.

Taylor succeeded with his potato diet challenge in every way. At least 99 percent of his caloric intake stemmed from a variety of tubers (the remaining percent came from the sauces and spices he used occasionally to season them). All of them were cooked without oil, typically boiled, baked or steamed. (No fries for this guy.) He shed the unhealthy pounds he had gained (likely because his overall calorie intake decreased compared to his previous dietary lifestyle), he found a natural boost in his energy levels and he got his food addiction under control.

Besides taking vitamin B12 supplements, he received enough nutrition from these potatoes to keep him healthy throughout the year, likely because he ate a variety of potatoes including sweet potatoes. His four blood tests over the course of the year corroborate that his health did not suffer.

Now, before you take up the potato-only diet, know that this style of eating can lead to major vitamin and mineral deficiencies. It’s possible that Taylor did not struggle with this problem because of the year time limit, as well as the more well-rounded nutritional profile of the food he chose. But who knows what would happen should he continue with just potatoes for an indefinite period of time.

Whatever you do, just don’t make your food pick chicken nuggets like this girl. Because that will most definitely end badly.