Sweet Potatoes
One of the most under-rated vegetables is sweet potato. So, it was only apt that we share our experience of sweet potato as a root vegetable and how immensely beneficial its increased consumption can be for you!
What if you know that Sweet Potatoes improve your body immunity and are a very good anti-oxidant? What if you further know that sweet potatoes help keep your eyes healthy. Or, it helps improve your reproductive health! And that means, right from acting as a catalyst for boosting the production of sperms and eggs to jacking up your libido!
And yes, it’s great for heart and kidneys too, viz, the young and the old alike!
We all relish root vegetables – potatoes, carrots, and radish being the most common. It’s an irony that Sweet Potatoes, in spite of being the most nutritious and healthy amongst all root vegetables, have not found much favor with the masses. Why? the lack of innovative recipes around sweet potatoes is perhaps the major reason.
How is Myints 3-Minutes associated with Sweet Potatoes?
Myints 3-minutes, a vegetarian brand headed by Aneeta Myint, an ex-Taj and an Entrepreneur who has set up hugely successful chains of restaurants from Port Blair to London and been a Professor and Chef Trainer at an International level, bring in a vast array of delicious gourmet snacks.
From marinated and roasted baby Potatoes to Pineapple Shashliks (yet to be launched, as of Mar 2022). Plant-based meat and Sweet potatoes are one of the vegetables that are in the R and D stage. We intend to use the immense flexibility of usage and benefits of sweet potato in our Roasted Mixed Vegetables (Ready-to-Eat) and Shashliks.
Sweet Potato Health benefits
Myths never leave us. With 30% or more of the adult segment controlling its sugar intake (due to diabetes, weight control, or other reasons), the SWEET word in the sweet potatoes becomes its nemesis – people avoid Sugar and anything sweet, including sweet potatoes!
Yes, the health benefits of sweet potatoes include it being the richest source of Vitamin A – and thus, excellent to keep your eyes in top condition. It’s anti-cancerous. It supports digestion (well, all root vegetables do!.
And, contrary to popular belief that it is sweet and hence not good for diabetes, sweet potato in fact is excellent for Type-2 diabetes!
Sweet Potatoes assists in weight loss
A Sweet potato a day can help control not just the body fat and weight, but, when included as a part of the regular diet at least thrice a week, can actually help in weight reduction and reduce obesity.
Sweet Potato is a superfood?
Growing old? Take Anti-oxidants. Don’t want pills? Take Vegetables and fruit rich in anti-oxidants. And sweet potato has lots of antioxidants to keep you young and your skin glowing as you age!
Well, what is a superfood? Something that gives you much more than normal food is a superfood. Which precisely means, multiple minerals/carbs/proteins/other intangible health benefits. In that respect, Sweet potato is a great superfood.
Usage of Sweet Potatoes
The benefits of sweet potato go beyond health. It can be just baked. Or, Air fried. Or cooked. One can have sweet potato chaat as snacks or its curry vegetable or on Shaslik sticks, marinated and roasted! Practically, it can be ‘softened’ and spiced up in any way!
You can have it as sweet potato mash, or with Spinach and Lentil Dal. For the ones who love cooking, you can simply make a sweet potato stew at home in 5 min! With curried vegetables, it can be a great ingredient, providing its own softly sweet flavor to the otherwise spicy curry.
Nutrients in Sweet Potatoes
Nutrients in one cup of 200 gms of sweet potatoes include just 180 calories and are hugely filling! With only 0.3 gms of fat, it also provides almost 7 times the daily requirement of Vitamin A. It’s not rich in Proteins and fibers though – but that’s also a great benefit of sweet potato for many!
Another health benefit is that it is a great source of Vitamin C also – one cup of 200 gms provides almost 65% of the daily requirement of Vitamin C.
What a No with Sweet potatoes
You can steam, roast, boil, or microwave sweet potatoes. Sweet potato fries are also tasty but don’t eat them often. Although they offer more nutrients than fries made from white potatoes, they’re still high in fat. Why? It’s not because of sweet potatoes, but the oil used in frying that makes them absorb oil and massively increase their fat content.
And yes, don’t store them in the refrigerator – a normal airy environment will keep the sweet potatoes fresh for 7-14 days.
What Myints 3-minutes does not support
While people are using Sweet Potatoes in various forms, Aneeta Myint believes that using them in fried pakodas is actually doing a great disservice to Sweet potatoes. The deep-fried pakodas kill many of the health benefits of sweet potato while adding a lot of Oil, fat, and Carbs! She recommends using it in a way that is delicious as well as healthy – why should a healthy vegetable be made unhealthy by deep-frying? She asks, why cannot the Chefs and Professors make tasty dishes out of sweet potatoes while preserving their nutritious benefits?
