Twice-Baked Sweet Potato (Yam) Recipe with Chipotle Pecan Streusel (2024)

FAQs

Is sweet potato good for high blood pressure? ›

Eating potassium-rich sweet potatoes helps promote a healthy heart. Higher potassium intake allows you to excrete more sodium lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk for heart disease according to the American Heart Association.

Their tapered tubers have relatively thin, edible skins and sweet flesh that ranges from white to orange and purple. Their tender leaves are a good cooked vegetable, too. Sweet potatoes cook more quickly than yams, are moister, and they taste distinctly sweet.

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.

“Sweet potatoes are a source of carbohydrates, which raise blood sugars,” says White. “People with diabetes can eat carbs but need to watch portions of foods with carbs.” What this means: Limit portions to half a sweet potato per meal or snack.

“One serving of sweet potatoes is generally about 4 to 5 ounces,” says Mackenzie Burgess, RDN, registered dietitian nutritionist and recipe developer at Cheerful Choices.

Freezing sweet potatoes drives excess water out of the potato, resulting in an interior with more concentrated flavor. Freezing also lowers the starting temperature of the potato, allowing more time for amylase enzymes to convert starch to sweet-tasting maltose.

Because they are available fresh, canned or frozen, sweet potatoes offer the ultimate flexibility for healthy and delicious menu options at any meal. With virtually no fat and low in sodium, sweet potatoes, or yams, fit perfectly into a low-carb lifestyle, with major nutritional bonuses to boot.

Microwaving jumpstarts the cooking process and cuts down the total cook time by almost an hour, but you will still get the sweet, caramelized flesh and crisp skin that only comes from oven baking. It's the best of both worlds.

Boiling may actually retain most of the antioxidant power of sweet potatoes, compared to roasting and steaming. If we compare baking to boiling microscopically, boiling helps thin out the cell walls and gelatinize the starch, which may enhance the bioavailability of nutrients.

What are yams slang for? ›

The question has been answered. For clarity: "Yams" are a specific potato that is shaped roughly similar to a human leg (feminine). The slang was used predominantly in the 1940s to 1960s to describe an attractive woman's legs. "Gams" means the same thing.

The word yam is derived from nyam, nyami, or nyambi, verbs of various African dialects meaning either “to taste” or “to eat.” The prevailing theory is that enslaved Africans applied these terms over time to the sweet potatoes available in the Americas, which took the place in their diet of the staple root vegetable ...

This root vegetable is extremely popular in South Korea and enjoyed in so many ways, including pre-packaged snacks, lattes, noodles, pizzas, stews, desserts, you name it! And in the winter time, it's such a treat to warm up with a steaming hot sweet potato from a street vendor.

Although both veggies are very close in fiber, protein, vitamin C, and magnesium, sweet potatoes are the healthier option because they are lower in overall calories, lower in carbohydrates, and higher in beta carotene (vitamin A).

The polyphenol in purple potatoes may also help." Additionally, potatoes are also a good source of potassium. According to Macrobiotic nutritionists and health practitioner Shilpa Arora says, "high potassium food items should be encouraged for high BP.

People with kidney problems must avoid eating sweet potatoes because an improper functioning kidney cannot remove potassium from their body, causing high potassium levels that can be harmful to them. Sweet potatoes contain high amounts of oxalates that may increase the risk of calcium-oxalate kidney stones.

Fruit and vegetables

As well as nitrates, all fruit and vegetables provide us with potassium, which can also help lower blood pressure. It's best to get the potassium we need through foods, rather than supplements. Too much potassium can be harmful, as it can affect the rhythm of the heart.

Sweet potatoes: Loaded with magnesium, potassium, and fiber, this side dish superstar is a delicious way to lower blood pressure. Leafy greens: Cabbage, collard greens, spinach, kale, and other greens are high in nitrates, which have been found to offer blood pressure benefits.