Health Benefits of Sweet Potatoes and Its Nutrition

Who doesn’t love sweet potatoes? They are mild in taste, feel sweet and soft to eat, and are filled with fiber. Close to red potatoes, they do contain starches. However, they are quite a healthier version of ordinary potatoes. Sweet potatoes are filled with so many nutrients that these are considered superfoods for people for all the right reasons.

In this article, we will discuss the different nutrients found in sweet potatoes, what do they do for you, and the many health benefits of including sweet potatoes in your diet.

Nutrition Facts

Some nutrition facts of sweet potatoes are as under:

Fiber

As quite evident, sweet potatoes are filled with fiber. The fiber content in sweet potatoes is helpful in driving a multitude of functions in your body. For example, the short-chain fatty acids that the bacteria in your gut produce by consuming the fiber helps in improving body immunity, cognitive function, and a lot of other things.

Carbohydrates

Sweet potato of a medium contains only 27 grams of carbohydrates. The main carbohydrate components are starches, which make up around 53% of the total content. Monosaccharides such as fructose, glucose, maltose, and sucrose make 32% of the total carb content. Sweet potatoes range from medium to high in their glycemic index proportion, differing from 44 to 96. The glycemic index indicates the pace at which the blood glucose levels rise up in your body after consuming a food item.

You should boil the sweet potatoes in order to lower the glycemic index if you have diabetes. Instead of roasting or frying, try the boiling method.

Starches

Starches are characterized into three different categories depending on the pace at which they are digested. The proportions of the sweet potatoes in starches are depicted as follows:

Rapid Digesting – 80% – It quickly breaks down and gets absorbed in the body, elevating the GI value.

Slow Digesting – 9% – It slowly breaks down and elevates the blood glucose levels.

Resistant Starch – 11% – It doesn’t get digested and manifests as fiber, feeding the microflora. You can cool down the sweet potatoes after boiling them to increase the resistant starch content.

Protein

A sweet potato of a medium-size contains 2 grams of protein. Sweet potatoes include sporamins which are the special proteins making up 80% of the total content. These work to improve overall body healing when subjected to any kind of damage in the body. Science suggests that they also have antioxidative characteristics. Sweet potatoes are low in protein. However, they come as important macronutrients.

Sweet potatoes are generally made up of carbohydrates. Most carbohydrate content comes from starch with high fiber amounts. The vegetable is considered to be relatively low in protein content. However, it is considered an important one in a lot of developing countries.

Minerals and Vitamins

Sweet potatoes may come as a great source of vitamin C, beta carotene, and potassium. One of the most highlighted minerals and vitamins found in sweet potatoes include the following:

Carotenoids – They are considered to be rich in provitamin A or beta carotene that gets converted into vitamin A. Only 100 grams of sweet potatoes give your RDA needed for vitamin A.

Sweet potatoes also contain vitamin C, which decreases the overall severity and duration of the common cold and improves dermatological health. Potassium is also found in sweet potatoes, which is helpful to control blood pressure, and it might also decrease the overall risk of cardiac diseases. Manganese is a mineral important for the metabolism, development, and growth of the body. It is also found in sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes also contain vitamin B6 and vitamin B5. The first is important for converting food into usable energy, and the latter is helpful for carrying out different metabolic functions. Vitamin E also helps in protecting the body against any antioxidant damage.

In short, sweet potatoes are helpful in increasing potassium, vitamin C, and beta carotene. They also contain a healthy amount of different minerals and vitamins.

Health Benefits:

These are some health benefits of this vegetable:

Better Blood Glucose Stability

Imbalance in the blood glucose levels in your body, as well as an imbalanced secretion of insulin, are some of the main characteristics of type 2 diabetes. There are some types of sweet potatoes that may help in the improvement of the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in patients, such as Caiapo. It is a sweet potato type that may not only decrease the LDL cholesterol and the fasting blood glucose levels but may also improve insulin sensitivity.

However, there is a need for more extensive research.

Prevention of Cancer

Oxidative damage done to body cells is often linked with an overall high risk of developing cancer, which takes place when cells tend to divide in an uncontrolled manner. Diets that are rich in their antioxidant content, like carotenoids, are linked with an overall decreased risk of kidney, stomach, and breast cancers in humans. Scientific studies suggest that the potent antioxidants found in sweet potatoes might reduce your overall risk of developing cancers. Also, purple potatoes are claimed to have the most antioxidant benefit.

Better Digestion

The antioxidants and the fiber found in the vegetable are important for maintaining and improving gut health. Sweet potatoes may contain up to two fiber types, including insoluble and soluble fiber. The body is not able to digest these fibers. So, the fiber content stays in your GI tract and offers a lot of benefits associated with gut health.

There are certain soluble fiber types like viscous fiber, which help in the softening of your stool and absorption of water. What’s more, the insoluble fibers, which are non-viscous, don’t tend to absorb the water and tend to add bulk to the stool.

Some fibers of soluble and insoluble types may also be fermented with the help of different bacteria present in your colon, which may create short-chain fatty acids. These help to improve the integrity of intestinal cell wall lining and help them keep strong and healthy. Some research studies have shown that antioxidants present in purple sweet potatoes help in the promotion of the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut, including lactobacillus and bifidobacterium species.

Might Fight Cancer

Not only do sweet potatoes prevent cancer from occurring, but they also help in fighting cancerous cells. Anthocyanins, which are certain antioxidants present in purple sweet potatoes, are shown to slow the different cancer cell development, including colon, breast, and bladder cancer.

Similarly, the diet rich in these sweet potatoes has shown a lower incidence rate of colon cancer in mice subjects, suggesting the antioxidant compounds in sweet potatoes may come with a protective effect. The extract of the sweet potato peels and the orange sweet potatoes also fight cancer, as shown in some studies.

Improves Eye Vision

Sweet potatoes are known to be high in beta carotene, which helps in the improvement of eye vision. In fact, about a cup of orange sweet potatoes with the skin on offers up to seven times the beta carotene required in the RDA of one person. Beta-carotene is transformed to vitamin A present in your body which is utilized to create the light-detecting receptors in your eyes.

The deficiency of this vitamin rises as a concern in some countries and may lead to xerophthalmia, which is a special type of blindness. Consuming foods high in beta carotene, such as sweet potatoes, might help to protect against this illness. Purple sweet potatoes may also have eye-protective properties. Research has found that the antioxidants found in the vegetable may help in the protection of the eye cells from overall damage, which may improve vision.

Might Improve Cognitive Function

Eating sweet potatoes might improve cognitive function. Studies have shown that the anthocyanin in sweet potatoes may help in protecting the brain through the prevention of free radical damage and by reducing overall inflammation.

Supplementing with the sweet potatoes extract is shown to improve overall working memory and learning abilities in mice subjects, which is associated with the antioxidants present in them. It is shown that people who consume a diet rich in antioxidant foods, such as sweet potatoes, come with a 13% lower overall risk of dementia and mental decline.

Improvement in Immunity

Sweet potatoes are also known to be helpful in improving your immune system. It is because they are high in beta carotene, which is a plant compound that gets converted to vitamin A in the bloodstream. This vitamin is important for developing overall immunity, and low blood vitamin A levels are associated with overall reduced immunity. It is also integral for the maintenance of healthy mucous membranes like the gut lining, for example. Your gut is majorly exposed to the pathogens causing disease. So, it is important to have good gut health in order to improve your immunity.

Final Word

As you can see, there are different nutrients in sweet potatoes that make them superfoods. High in fiber, resistant starch, vitamin A, B, and C, these are known to prevent cancer, blindness, diabetes, and other major chronic problems.