Nutrition Tips from Blessilla (Sweet Potato Season)

Yay, its sweet potato season and Blessilla Nana-afoe Aya Kandoh our nutritionist has some educative tips on sweet potato.

 Blessilla Nana-afoe Aya Kandoh is a nutritionist and MCH advocate. Although they're soft and creamy enough to be put in pies and called dessert, sweet potatoes are also a surprisingly nutritious vegetable.

Sweet potatoes are true to their name: They are sweet, particularly the orange-fleshed varieties. Most people love the sweet taste and enjoy snacking on sweet potato and sweet potato products. This helps them get the nutrients from it in order to grow strong and healthy. 

Sweet potato will not just only sweeten your taste buds but are also good for your cardiovascular and entire health. Their rich orange color indicates that they are high in carotenoids like beta carotene and other carotenoids, which is the precursor to vitamin A in your body. 

Carotenoids help strengthen our eyesight and boost our immunity to diseases. They are also powerful antioxidants that help ward off cancer and protect against the effects of aging. The skin colour of sweet potato ranges between yellow, violet, orange, purple and pink.

Not only are sweet potatoes readily available, inexpensive, and delicious, they have many other benefits for your health. Here are 6 reasons why you should eat sweet potatoes;

Sweet potatoes provide good amounts of vital minerals such as iron, calcium, folate, magnesium, manganese, and potassium. Because of its high fiber content, sweet potatoes help to prevent constipation and promote regularity for a healthy digestive tract. Sweet potatoes are a good source of dietary fiber, which helps the body maintain a healthy digestive tract and regulates digestion.

Sweet potatoes contains no saturated fats or cholesterol making them very good for weight loss and people with hypertension. Sweet potatoes are full of the A, B, C’s – and E’s. They are loaded with these vitamins. Taking a lot of Vitamin A in one’s diet increases immunity substantially. Children and active adults of all ages need large doses of Vitamin A for healthy eyes, teeth, bones and immunity to disease. 

Sweet potato leaves are very important too.

They are very nutritious and contain lots of iron, vitamin C, folate, vitamin K, and potassium but less sodium than its tuber. Sweet potatoes are versatile. That’s good news right? That means you can try them boiled, fried, roasted, puréed, steamed, baked, or grilled. You can also add them to soups and stews, or grill them and place on top of leafy greens for a delicious salad.

Here are some of the ways in which you can enjoy sweet potato. You can boil, blend and squeeze the juice out to make sweet potato juice, boil it for sweet potato ampesi and bake or fry slices for sweet potato chips. 

Other recipes include sweet potato mpotompoto (pudding), sweet potato leaf stew (palaver sauce), sweet potato leaf soup (with okra), sweet potato waakye (swaakye), sweet potato wasawasa, sweet potato porridge, sweet potato flour, sweet potato cake, bread, doughnuts ,pancakes, pie.

Share with us your recipes too…Have a sweet potato day.