Australian man on an all-potato diet loses 17 kg

An Australian man who plans to eat nothing but potatoes for an entire year said on Tuesday that despite his strange diet he was not only feeling better, but surprisingly enjoying his meals.

Unlike Matt Damon’s character in The Martian, who is stranded on the Red Planet with little else to eat, Andrew Taylor, 35, made a deliberate decision to eat only the starchy staple for 12 months, to break what he termed his “food addiction”.

While addicts can go “cold turkey” on their vice, such as alcohol or cigarettes, it is impossible to do so with food, so Taylor settled on making his diet as boring as possible. “The next best thing was to find one thing that sustained me healthily,” he said, saying that besides potatoes, he also considered mangoes, bananas and watermelon.

After deciding there were more options with the humble spud, Taylor now eats as many as he wants each day, boiled, mashed and even made into pancakes, occasionally flavouring them with seasonings such as garlic and salt. “I’m not having any fats, no butter, no meat, no dairy... No oil either,” the stay-at-home dad said, adding he was coping well on day 54. Taylor is documenting his experience on his Spud Fit Facebook page, which has more than 6,000 likes, and says while losing weight was not his ultimate goal, he has so far shed 17 kg. “I’m sleeping better and have better mental clarity and focus,” he said, adding that his joint pain had also disappeared. Taylor shru-gged off the idea that he is not getting enough nutrients, saying he is taking vitamin B12 tablets and is under medical supervision. “People assume that I am going to be sick and die,” he jokes. “If I feel sick, I’ll just eat something else.”