Sweet potato starch, ethical, and sustainable food for all. 781 64 288 64 288 64S117.

1 208 208 208c52 0 99. Are Sweet Potatoes Good for You? When I was a kid growing up in British Columbia, my kale and turnip-loving parents didn’t feed us processed sugar of any kind. But once in a while, on a special occasion, we’d have sweet potatoes. Clearly, I’m extremely fond of sweet potatoes. So when I decided to write an article about them, I had to check all my happy memories at the keyboard and look at the evidence.

Are sweet potatoes good for you? Are there any sweet potato health benefits? How can we prepare them, aside from in holiday casseroles and pies? Despite the shared name, sweet potatoes are only distantly related to the potatoes used to make French fries or potato chips. Other members include tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, peppers, pimentos, and Goji berries. Other root tubers include beets, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, and turnips.

Root tubers store water and energy, like starch and other carbohydrates, underground. They draw upon these resources to feed the aboveground parts of the plant. The Origin of the Sweet Potato Sweet potatoes are some of the oldest foods known to humanity. They are native to Central and South America. Wherever and whenever they originated, and however they have traveled the globe, I’m incredibly thankful that most of us have sweet potatoes in our lives today.

What’s the Difference Between a Sweet Potato and a Yam? But these two plants aren’t actually related at all. Yams are related to grasses and lilies and native to Africa and Asia. You can find sweet potatoes at just about any grocery store. However, in North America and Europe, you will only find true yams stocked at international and specialty markets. There are actually two types of sweet potatoes in most mainstream produce sections: firm and soft.

Grocers needed a way to differentiate between the two types. How Many Sweet Potato Varieties Exist? The sweet potato geeks of the world may be fascinated to know that the International Potato Center in Peru maintains a gene bank consisting of over 6,500 varieties of sweet potato. I don’t know about you, but personally, I wish I could try them all! Sweet potato varieties range in color from dark red to brown to purple to orange-yellow to white.

They also have different tastes, sizes, shapes, and textures. These are often the ones masquerading as yams at mainstream grocery stores. Who knew sweet potatoes could be so sneaky? White sweet potatoes are crumbly, with white flesh and golden brown skin. They don’t contain as many antioxidants as orange varieties. Okinawan sweet potatoes are also known as purple sweet potatoes because of their high anthocyanin content. Anthocyanins are the pigments that give red, blue, and violet plant foods their beautiful colors.

Japanese or Satsumaimo sweet potatoes are known for being sweeter than most other types. This is especially true when they start caramelizing in the oven. Sweet potatoes are very hardy vegetables. They’re able to grow at many altitudes, in many climates, and under compromised soil conditions. Even if you don’t have the greenest of thumbs, sweet potatoes are pretty forgiving with just a little TLC. What Makes a Sweet Potato Sweet?

A bowl of roasted sweet potatoes. When you heat sweet potatoes, an enzyme starts breaking down their starch into a sugar called maltose. Maltose isn’t as sweet as table sugar. You can control the sweetness of sweet potatoes somewhat by how you cook them. On the other hand, cooking sweet potatoes slowly on low heat will allow that maltose-making enzyme more time to convert the starch into sugar — giving you sweeter sweet potatoes. Looking for even more control over the sweetness?