Written By Miranda Regalado
This week we’ll enjoy the savory taste of sweet potatoes. This orange-fleshed, buttery soft when baked, tuber has been around longer than we can determine. Its origins are believed to be from tropical Central or South America, but researchers suggest it might also have been present in Polynesia thousands of years before humans arrived there.
While scholars decide on its origins, we can discuss its wonderful benefits. Known for their vibrant orange color, sweet potatoes also come in white, cream, yellow, and purple. This famous root ranks between the seventh and fifth most produced crops worldwide, thanks to its content being filled with macronutrients such as starch, fiber, and protein, along with a range of vitamins and minerals like manganese, copper, potassium, iron, vitamins C, E, and B complex, and provitamin A, to name a few.
Sweet potatoes are much more than just a good source of carbohydrates and fiber; today, they are recognized as a highly nutritious food that can also prevent some chronic diseases. The magic comes from the color: both the purple and orange types have high concentrations of anthocyanin and carotenoid, respectively. These phytochemicals exhibit free radical scavenging activity, which not only prevents cell spoilage and death but also lowers the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.
Other studies highlight the potential benefits and uses of purple sweet potatoes for their hepatoprotective properties and cognitive and memory improvement. It’s clear that these benefits are why we have kept these root vegetables so close to our tables. And when it comes to cooking them, they’re even more accommodating. We can bake, roast, steam, boil, or fry them, and in some cases, we might increase their benefits over consuming them raw. Roasting or steam-cooking, due to the softening of the cell walls, facilitates the release of phenolic compounds. As a helpful tip, if you boil them with the skin on in a lid-closed pot, which reduces the cooking time, you might retain up to 92% of their nutrients.
As we say “the possibilities are endless” and the sweet potato, with its rich colors and flavors, is more than a versatile kitchen staple—it’s a nutritional super food that is capable of boosting our health much more than we ever thought.
