Sweet Potatoes: A Power Food

If your sweet potato experience is limited to eating them twice a year in holiday casseroles topped with marshmallows, you're missing out on a powerful and delicious food to help your heart. This antioxidant-rich root vegetable can be part of your heart-healthy diet.

By Marsha McCulloch, M.S., R.D.

The Cleveland Clinic, a premier U.S. heart hospital, has recommended the sweet potato as one of the 40 most powerful foods for heart health.

Sweet potatoes are loaded with the heart-healthy antioxidants beta-carotene (the plant form of vitamin A) and anthocyanin.

Compared with a russet potato, a sweet potato has:
-nearly as much potassium
-a bit more vitamin C
-a bit more fiber (if you eat the skin)
-more than a day's worth of vitamin A (russets have no vitamin A)
- the same number of calories (about 100 for a medium potato)

The most popular sweet potatoes in the United States are the moist, orange-fleshed garnet, jewel, and Beauregard varieties, but several others are available.

For the most part, different varieties can be used interchangeably in recipes, although the moist, orange-fleshed ones generally are a little sweeter and take a little longer to cook. Ask your local grocers which ones they sell or look for the more unusual varieties at farmer's markets.

Buying tip: The vegetable may be labeled as sweet potatoes at one grocery store and yams at the next, but officially, they're all sweet potatoes. A real yam is hard to find, unless you go to an ethnic market.

Read on to gain confidence and knowledge in shopping for, storing, and cooking with sweet potatoes.