Foods for Life: Sweet Potatoes!!

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Sweet Potatoes! A true, natural super food for humans, fitting in to many dietary groups, too! Full of Vitamin A and antioxidants, one large potato can provide enormous amounts of protection against early aging, cancer prevention, and maintaining good eyesight. Very versatile, sweet potatoes can be used in everything from soups and bases, to main dishes, and even desserts! Packed with more nutrients than you can imagine, like vitamins B5 and B6, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and carotenoids from their orange color! Low in sodium and fat they fit with gluten free and paleo eating lifestyles!

While orange is the favored and most available color of sweet potato, there are also yellow, white, and purple varieties available. Orange and yellow contain the most vitamin A, but purple contains a myriad of antioxidants great for the body!

Help your heart! Sweet potatoes are GREAT for heart health! B6 helps to break down homocysteine, which is a substances that hardens blood cells and arteries inside the body. An orange sweet potato has an average of 440mg of potassium, which is also very heart healthy! As an electrolyte, potassium helps regulate your heart rate.

Along with heart health comes immune benefits, too! With such high vitamins A, C and E, they have high levels of anti-inflammatory properties. This is why sweet potatoes are seen as a staple in many paleo lifestyles and diets. The magnesium contained by the sweet potato can help regulate stress levels in the body, naturally. The dietary fiber can also work to keep the gastrointestinal tract regular!

There have been numerous studies done on the effects of beta-carotene on cancer patients, and specific kinds of cancer. In certain instances, breast cancers patients did benefit from eating more orange vegetables, high in the levels of anti-carcinogenic properties. For these studies, purple and red vegetables showed to be MORE beneficial than the super orange foods.

The Downside of Sweet Potatoes

While these are some of the healthiest vegetables on earth, they are also very high in carbohydrates, and calories. They also have more sugar than regular “white” potatoes. Eating orange vegetables frequently can cause a slight orange tint to the skin, and fingernails. No other major side effects had been reported.

Sweet Potato Facts

Christopher Columbus took sweet potatoes to Europe after his first voyage to the New World in 1492.

Sweet potatoes are roots, whereas regular potatoes are tubers (underground stems).

Sweet potatoes are native to Central and South America and have been grown for at least 10,000 years.

By the 16th century, Spanish and Portuguese explorers had taken sweet potatoes to the Philippines and to Africa, India, Indonesia and southern Asia. Around this same time, sweet potatoes began to be cultivated in the southern United States.

George Washington grew sweet potatoes at Mount Vernon.

China grows about 80 million tons of sweet potatoes each year, Africa produces about 14 million tons, Central and South America churn out about 2 million tons and the United States harvests about 1 million tons.

George Washington Carver developed 118 products from sweet potatoes, including glue for postage stamps and starch for sizing cotton fabrics.

Sweet potatoes are North Carolina’s official state vegetable. North Carolina is the leading producer of sweet potatoes in the United States, producing about 40 percent of the national supply.

 Resources Used:

livescience.com