Potato Starch: a Review of Physicochemical, Functional and Nutritional Properties

With a rapid increase in type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) throughout the world in recent years, it has also become a major human health issue. Today, more than one third of the world's population is living with diabetes or prediabetes. Expenditures associated with medical treatment constitutes a huge financial burden on our society and costs billions of taxpayers’ dollars. Although the etiology is multifactorial, diet has been identified as the single most important contributing environmental factor to the development of this disease. Potatoes are an important agricultural commodity as a staple food and for many industrial uses. Although native potato starch is resistant to digestion, it is rapidly digestible in fully cooked potatoes. It results in the high glycemic index (GI) of most processed potato products, which are not suitable for people with T2DM and obesity. Due to the complexity of foods containing different chemical compositions, multiphase structures, and composite systems, we know little about the structural characteristics of starch in cooked and cooled potato products, how food processing can influences the structure of starch to create nutritional benefits, and the mechanism of low GI potato-based foods. In this chapter, we will address the role of potato starch chemistry and structure on nutritional properties of potato and how changes in the physical, chemical and nutritional properties of starch occur as they are subjected to different treatment conditions for potato food processing and nutrition.