15+ Sweet Potato Recipes You'll Love (2024)

FAQs

What do sweet potatoes do for women's body? ›

Just one sweet potato gives you 102% of the vitamin A you need each day. This helps keep your eyes healthy as well as your immune system, your body's defense against germs. It's also good for your reproductive system and organs like your heart and kidneys.

Heart health: Studies have suggested that sweet potatoes may reduce bad cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, prevent diabetes, and maintain healthy blood sugar levels. All these factors protect and lower the risk of heart events.

“A general guideline to estimating how many sweet potatoes you need when hosting friends or family for a meal is one medium sweet potato per person,” Burgess says, as if she's done this many times before.

While both our experts say eating a sweet potato a day is certainly healthy, they don't recommend more than that, since there are plenty of other vegetables to enjoy too. “If you're eating more than one a day, you might want to consider varying up your food choices so you get a variety of nutrients,” Rizzo says.

How to tell if sweet potatoes have gone bad. If your sweet potato is soft in spots, smells rotten, or oozes a mysterious liquid, that potato should be discarded. Another sign that sweet potatoes have taken a turn for the worse is if they start growing stalky purplish sprouts.

Gastrointestinal Health

Along with anti-inflammatory properties, sweet potatoes have plenty of gut-friendly fiber, especially if you eat the skin. They are a mixture of soluble fiber, which can lower cholesterol and balance glucose, and insoluble fiber, which helps keep your bowels healthy and regular.

Therefore, from a nutritional standpoint, boiling rather than baking should be recommended for cooking sweet potato. Boiling may theoretically be best, but sweet potatoes are so incredibly healthy that the actual best way to prepare them is whichever way will get you to eat the most of them!

As we know, sweet potato has several benefits that make it worth including in your weight loss diet. So, by incorporating it into healthy meals and watching your portion sizes, you may find that it does support your weight loss goals and results in getting rid of unwanted belly fat.

~ Eating sweet potatoes for breakfast or lunch can provide you with sustained energy throughout the day. They can also be a great post-workout meal due to their balance of complex carbs and nutrients.

If you enjoy sweet potatoes, you can absolutely enjoy them daily. However, eating multiple sweet potatoes every day could cause a harmless condition called carotenodermia, where your skin turns yellow-orange. You may also want to be cautious about your sweet potato intake if you have a history of kidney stones.

Is it okay to eat a whole sweet potato? ›

You can eat sweet potatoes whole or peeled and the leaves of the plant are edible, too. Although, they may both be called 'potatoes', sweet and regular white potatoes are not related.

Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family, while yams belong to the lily family. Yams aren't as sweet as sweet potatoes, and they are starchier and drier.

Antioxidants Aplenty

Purple-fleshed sweet potatoes are thought to contain super-high levels of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agents. As these substances pass through your system, they balance out free radicals -- chemicals that harm your cells.

Conclusion. The humble sweet potato's antioxidant, vitamin, and mineral values make it a top contender as a “superfood”. Getting some in your diet could give your health a boost!

Though they can both be part of a healthy diet, sweet potatoes are generally healthier than regular potatoes, partly because of their incredibly high vitamin A content. Sweet potatoes are also lower on the glycemic index, meaning that they are less likely than regular potatoes to make your blood sugar spike.

But sweet potatoes can help. They contain phytoestrogens, natural plant compounds that act as estrogen in the body. “Phytoestrogens, like those found in sweet potatoes, have been shown to reduce menopause symptoms such as vagin*l dryness and hot flashes,” Poon notes.

Sweet potato is considered a fertility-boosting food due to it's high amounts of Vitamin A. Not only has this vitamin been found to improve reproduction but Vitamin A deficiency has been linked to infertility. Sweet potatoes are also rich in iron, which is an essential vitamin for any female trying to get pregnant.

Sweet potato

A great source of vitamin B6, which has been found to help ease many PMS symptoms including irritability, depression and mood swings. Vitamin B6 plays a vital part in synthesising the brain's "feel good" chemicals dopamine and serotonin, which control mood and behaviour.

Sweet potatoes are rich in beta-carotene, a carotenoid. Consuming lots of foods high in carotenoids may be associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer. Sweet potatoes are also high in fibre; high total fibre consumption is associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer.