For years I never liked sweet potatoes unless it was Thanksgiving and the sweet potatoes were covered in melted marshmallows and of course, swimming in a sea of melted butter and brown sugar. Sweet potatoes were meant for holidays, and meant to be dressed up. Not anymore. The push is on by food enthusiasts, nutrition experts, and yes, ‘health nuts’ to consume more and more sweet potatoes. Restaurants serve them more routinely these days, and even a fast-food chain offers sweet potato fries.
Sweet potatoes are of course a root vegetable. The large, starchy tuber is cooked in nearly every shape and form. The young leaves and shoots are often eaten as greens in salads. An interesting fact is sweet potatoes actually belong to the morning-glory family! Who knew? Many people interchange yams and sweet potatoes. True yams are not sweet potatoes and are expensive and hard to get. Yams belong to the lily family of plants. Yams are starchier and drier than sweet potatoes.Yams are grown in Africa more than anywhere else. Yams sold in the United States are actually sweet potato. True yams need to be sought in international markets, and are much more expensive than sweet potatoes. Two dominant varieties of sweet potatoes exist; hard and soft. In the United States firm varieties of sweet potatoes were produced long before soft sweet potato varieties. Once soft varieties of sweet potatoes were offered commercially they needed to be identified differently than the hard variety, and were labeled yams. Years and years ago, slaves called the soft sweet potato yams as they resembled the true yam grown in Africa.The USDA now requires any yam offered to the public also include the name sweet potato. When trying to decide whether to purchase ‘yams’ or ‘sweet potatoes’ today, choose yams for mashing or grating into baked goods where you want a softer product. Choose sweet potatoes for boiling, steaming, and roasting where you want the potato to retain its shape. In the United States, sweet potatoes are sweet potatoes, and yams are sweet potatoes too. Now you know!
Sweet potatoes are indeed good for you. A cup of cooked sweet potato has 114 calories, 4 grams of fiber, and 27 grams of carbohydrates. Sweet potatoes have a lower glycemic index of 17 than white potatoes, which averages 29. A serving offers about 65% of your daily Vitamin C requirement. They are high in calcium, potassium and folate. Sweet potatoes offer more beta-carotene than an equal amount of carrots. A simple one-cup serving of sweet potatoes provides about 700% of the US RDA for Vitamin A, which is why many say sweet potatoes are a skin super food. Many health professionals’ rate sweet potatoes as the healthiest vegetable you can eat because of their nutritional richness.
To gain the greatest nutritional benefit from sweet potatoes prepare them with the skin. Steaming or boiling rather than baking helps maintain the nutrition of sweet potatoes. So rather than buying a sweet potatoes, poking it full of tooth picks, and setting it in a jar of water to have your kids watch the roots and vine grow, try eating them more often. Baked, mashed, steamed, and even fried will more than likely provide more health benefits than the traditional white potato. Toss them in soups and stews, or grate them into muffins and breads. However you prepare them you will be providing yourself with a dose of good nutrition, and a taste delight at the same time!
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