The Health Benefits of Potato Skins
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The Health Benefits of Potato Skins

The Health Benefits of Potato Skins
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Updated on July 31, 2025
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Potatoes are filling, affordable, and versatile, but not everyone thinks about preparing them with the skins on for a little health boost. Unpeeled potatoes can provide more fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals than eating just the flesh.

Eating the skins alone to lower the carbohydrates you consume can be a healthy option, too — as long as you don't mistake skin on a potato for an appetizer loaded with butter, sour cream, cheese, and bacon. Potato skins are low in calories and provide a variety of health benefits.

Nutritional Profile

The skins of potatoes only contain 22 calories, trace amounts of vitamins and minerals, and no unhealthy fat, so there’s no nutritional urgency to peel them off.

A potato with skin is particularly high in vitamin C with 42 milligrams (mg) on average, or 47 percent Daily Value (DV). DV is the percentage of a nutrient in a food relative to the daily recommended amount.

Additionally, a medium potato with the skin contains:

  • Calories: 164
  • Carbohydrates: 37g, or 13 percent DV
  • Protein: 4g, or 8 percent DV
  • Fiber: 4.5g, or 16 percent DV
  • Copper: 0.2mg, or 22 percent DV
  • Iron: 1.7mg, or 9 percent DV
  • Potassium: 905mg percent DV, 19 percent DV
  • Magnesium: 49mg, or 12 percent DV

Health Benefits of Potatoes with Skin

Leaving the potato peeler in the drawer may help you get a bigger boost of these health benefits.

Better Digestion

Fiber is crucially important to the maintenance of a healthy digestive system. A medium baked potato with the skin on has 4.5 grams (g) of it, which can help keep your digestive system regular.

 Potatoes are rich in soluble fiber, which is the type of fiber that dissolves in water. Soluble fiber gives the stool bulk and acts as a natural stool softener, so it passes smoothly through your digestive system and helps prevent constipation‌.‌

Gradually increasing fiber can also help prevent recurrences of diverticulitis, which is a condition where you have inflamed pockets in the walls of the colon. A high-fiber diet is not recommended during a flare.

 Other research has found that a diet high in soluble fiber can also lower cholesterol, improve gut bacteria, and help prevent overeating.

Cancer Prevention

Changing up the color of your potatoes every once in a while can give you even more health benefits. Purple potatoes — along with their skin — may have have anticancer properties. One review found that extracts of phytonutrients from this type of spud helped decrease the spread of cancer cells in laboratory situations, but more human research is needed.

While the nutrients in purple potatoes may have an anticancer effect, other research finds that regular potato consumption doesn’t increase the risk of cancer of any kind.

Stronger Bones

Another benefit of potato peels comes from the minerals they contain that help maintain your bone health. These nutrients include magnesium and potassium, among others, although in low amounts.

 Including potato skins as part of an overall diet that includes other foods high in these minerals may help keep your bones healthy.
About 50 to 60 percent of the ‌magnesium‌ in your body resides in your bones.

Consuming this mineral in potato skin or whole potatoes that still have skin on them may help maintain your bone density and may reduce the risk of ‌osteoporosis‌ in women after menopause.

Dietary potassium has a beneficial effect on your skeletal system by reducing calcium loss from bone, leading to an increase in bone mineral density.

Lower Blood Pressure

Potato skin health benefits also include helping keep your cardiovascular system functioning properly. Eating potato skin — as well as the flesh of the potato along with it — may help you manage your blood pressure naturally through the potassium-magnesium one-two punch they contain. Eating an entire large potato — flesh and skin — provides 1,600 mg of potassium, which is 34 percent of the daily value.

Potassium can help control blood pressure by reducing the effects of sodium, a common culprit associated with hypertension.

 Potassium also helps relax blood vessel walls, which helps lower blood pressure.
‌Magnesium‌ also helps your blood vessels relax and plays a role in the transport of calcium and potassium ions across cell membranes. This process is important in maintaining normal heart rhythm and regulation of your blood pressure.

The Takeaway

  • Leaving the peels on your potatoes — or eating the peels without the flesh — can offer several health benefits.
  • Potato skins contain fiber that can aid in digestion and help maintain regular bowel movements.
  • The skin of the potato also provides small amounts of important minerals like magnesium and potassium, which contribute to stronger bones and may lower the risk of osteoporosis.
  • Leaving the skins on potatoes can also help manage blood pressure, due to its mineral content that blunts the impact of sodium.
EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
  1. Potatoes, raw, skin. Department of Agriculture FoodData Central. April 1, 2019.
  2. Potatoes, gold, without skin, raw. U.S. Department of Agriculture FoodData. October 28, 2022.
  3. Potatoes, flesh and skin, raw. U.S. Department of Agriculture FoodData Central. April 1, 2019.
  4. Foods for Constipation. Johns Hopkins Medicine.
  5. Diverticulitis Diet. Mayo Clinic. November 12, 2024.
  6. Soluble Fiber: What It Is and Why You Need It. UCLA Health. April 23, 2025.
  7. Purple Potato and Its Health Benefits. Indian Food Industry. December 2021.
  8. Mofrad MD et al. Potato Consumption and Risk of Site-Specific Cancers in Adults: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies. Advances in Nutrition. April 16, 2021.
  9. Food and Your Bones — Osteoporosis Nutrition Guidelines. Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation. December 27, 2023.
  10. Magnesium. National Institutes of Health. June 2, 2022.
  11. Wang J et al. Associations of the Dietary Magnesium Intake and Magnesium Depletion Score With Osteoporosis Among American Adults: Data From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Frontiers in Nutrition. May 31, 2022.
  12. Ha J et al. The Association of Potassium Intake With Bone Mineral Density and the Prevalence of Osteoporosis Among Older Korean Adults. Nutrition Research and Practice. January 21, 2020.
  13. A Primer on Potassium. American Heart Association. June 10, 2024.
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Lynn Grieger, RDN, CDCES

Medical Reviewer

Lynn Grieger is a registered dietitian-nutritionist, certified diabetes care and education specialist, certified personal trainer, and certified health and wellness coach. She completed requirements to become a registered dietitian at Valparaiso University in 1987 and completed a dietetic internship at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, Illinois, in 1988. 

Lynn brings her expertise in nutrition, exercise, and behavior change to her work in helping people reach their individual health and fitness goals. In addition to writing for Everyday Health, she has also written for websites and publications like Food and Health Communications, Today's Dietitian, iVillage.com, and Rodale Press. She has a passion for healthy, nutrient-dense, great-tasting food and for being outdoors as much as possible — she can often be found running or hiking, and has completed a marathon in every state.

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Gord Kerr

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Gordon Kerr has worked in the health care industry for the past 15 years. He holds a diploma in Food and Nutritional Science from CSNN, Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, Vancouver. With his passion for a healthy lifestyle and the desire to help others benefit from proper nutrition and natural remedies, Gordon accepted the international position with CARICOM Regional Food and Nutrition in the Caribbean and moved to Barbados. As well as educating the under-nourished people in the region, Gordon formulated dietary plans to help manage medical conditions including chronic nutrition-related diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. Now retired, Gord enjoys a quiet life on a small island in the Gulf Islands of B.C.

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