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Loading...9 Health Benefits of Sweet Potatoes
- Michelle Schoffro Cook
- November 15, 2011
- 4:11 pm
- 123 comments
Not only are sweet potatoes readily available, inexpensive, and delicious, there are many other reasons to love these yummy vegetables. Here are 9:
1. They are high in vitamin B6. Vitamin B6 helps reduce the chemical homocysteine in our bodies. Homocysteine has been linked with degenerative diseases, including the prevention of heart attacks.
2. They are a good source of vitamin C. While most people know that vitamin C is important to help ward off cold and flu viruses, few people are aware that this crucial vitamin plays an important role in bone and tooth formation, digestion, and blood cell formation. It helps accelerate wound healing, produces collagen which helps maintain skin’s youthful elasticity, and is essential to helping us cope with stress. It even appears to help protect our body against toxins that may be linked to cancer.
3. They contain Vitamin D which is critical for immune system and overall health at this time of year. Both a vitamin and a hormone, vitamin D is primarily made in our bodies as a result of getting adequate sunlight. You may have heard about seasonal affective disorder (or SAD, as it is also called), which is linked to inadequate sunlight and therefore a vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D plays an important role in our energy levels, moods, and helps to build healthy bones, heart, nerves, skin, and teeth, and it supports the thyroid gland.
4. Sweet potatoes contain iron. Most people are aware that we need the mineral iron to have adequate energy, but iron plays other important roles in our body, including red and white blood cell production, resistance to stress, proper immune functioning, and the metabolizing of protein, among other things.
5. Sweet potatoes are a good source of magnesium, which is the relaxation and anti-stress mineral. Magnesium is necessary for healthy artery, blood, bone, heart, muscle, and nerve function, yet experts estimate that approximately 80 percent of the population in North America may be deficient in this important mineral.
15 Favorite Sweet Potato Recipes
Discover many great ways to enjoy sweet potatoes on page 2…
Read more: Health, Aging, Basics, Cancer, Cholesterol, Depression, Diabetes, Diet & Nutrition, Eating for Health, General Health, Green Kitchen Tips, Heart & Vascular Disease, Michelle Schoffro Cook, Natural Remedies, Osteoporosis, Stress, Vegan, Vegetarian, blood sugar regulation, cancer, depression, eat more vegetables, energy, healthy eating, healthy foods, iron, magnesium, Michelle Schoffro Cook, nutrition, nutrition basics, potassium, SAD, seasonal affective disorder, sweet potatoes, The Life Force Diet, vegetables, vitamin b6, vitamin C, vitamin D, World's Healthiest News
Michelle Schoffro Cook
Michelle Schoffro Cook, MSc, RNCP, ROHP, DNM, PhD is an international best-selling and 14-time book author and doctor of traditional natural medicine, whose works include: 60 Seconds to Slim, Healing Recipes, The Vitality Diet, Allergy-Proof, Arthritis-Proof, Total Body Detox, The Life Force Diet, The Ultimate pH Solution, The 4-Week Ultimate Body Detox Plan, and The Phytozyme Cure. Check out her natural health resources and subscribe to her free e-magazine World's Healthiest News at WorldsHealthiestDiet.com to receive monthly health news, tips, recipes and more. Follow her on Twitter @mschoffrocook and Facebook.
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123 comments
+ add your ownThis is a great site. Another way to consume sweet potatoes is juicing them through an extractor. Come check out my site at http://www.juice-extractor-guide.com/sweetpotato.html
Sweet potatoes are not too popular in Malta and they're not that cheap either. Still, if all these benefits really arise from eating sweet potatoes, then they're good value for money.
I heard they can cause kidney stones. Any truth to that?
Love sweet potatoes. When you eat a total of 1200 calories a day, finding sweet FILLING things can be difficult.. I just pop a couple small-sized sweet potatoes in the oven for about an hour, then let them get cold (seems to make them sweeter). I eat them in replacement of candy or sweets, and they don't completely ruin my diet.
I used to hate them. But, after you ween yourself off of sugars, the taste just seems better.
Ok... What if i only have a microwave to work with...? (^^)
LOVE sweet potatoes.
Last night I made an incredible West African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup! Awesome soup!
love the taste...reminds me on pumpkin when boiled..like to add cinnamon....mmmmmm
I love sweet potatoes. This is my recipes for easy sweet potatoes desserts. 1 cup of barley, 1 medium sweet potatoes, 1 cup of sugar or honey and 5 cups of water. Put all the ingredients into the medium cooking pot and cook all of them together until it turn soft. Last add sugar or honey. Great for summer.
what about sweet potato french fries?
What can you tell me about those.
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