Sweet Potatoes Gain Popularity as Everyday Food

When was the last time there were sweet potatoes on the dinner table? Most people would have to think hard about this question. Most likely, the last time sweet potatoes were a part of a meal was last Thanksgiving or perhaps Christmas.

While they are a holiday staple, the farmers who grow sweet potatoes want this vegetable to be eaten more than just 1 or 2 days a year. In order to make this happen, they have some excellent health data, a new plant and a make-over plan.

Sweet Potatoes and Yams

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has all kinds of information about sweet potatoes and please, don't make the mistake of calling them yams. There are two types of sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas). The paler-skinned variety has a thin, light yellow skin with pale yellow flesh. Unlike the implication of its name, it is not sweet and has a dry, crumbly texture. The darker skinned variety of sweet potato has thicker, dark orange to reddish skin with bright orange, sweet flesh and a moist texture. This is the sweet potato that most everyone also calls a yam. It turns out that this is erroneous.

The true yam is tuber of a tropical vine, scientifically known as Dioscorea batatas, and it is not even distantly related to the sweet potato. Yams are closely related to lilies and grasses and native to Africa and Asia. There are over 600 varieties of yams and the USDA notes that while 95 percent of these are grown in Africa, they are slowly becoming popular in the U.S. markets. The yam tuber has a brown or black skin which resembles the bark of a tree and cream-colored, purple or red flesh, depending on the variety. Yams are generally sweeter than sweet potatoes and can grow to over seven feet in length.

African slaves working in southern vegetable fields were the first to mistake sweet potatoes for yams. The word yam comes from the African words njam, nyami or djambi and it means to eat. When sweet potatoes were first starting to be grown commercially, the African slaves began calling these soft, sweet potatoes "yams" because they resembled the yams of their native countries.

The Health Benefits of this Potato are Sweet

For several years, there has been a noticeable national trend in the United States to eat healthier. Because of their health benefits, consumption of sweet potatoes has increased accordingly.

Sweet potatoes are high in fiber and rich in Vitamin A (betacarotene) and Vitamin C. Both of these are powerful antioxidants that work in the body to remove free radicals. These free radicals are chemicals that damage cells, and can cause diseases such as cancer. Sweet potatoes are also sources for Vitamin B (Thiamine), Riboflavin, Niacin, Calcium, Iron, Potassium, Carbohydrates and Protein.

Nutritionists and physicians note that eating sweet potatoes can benefit the body in other ways. They have a positive effect on patients suffering from stomach ulcers and inflamed conditions of the colon and they have been credited with correcting low blood pressure. Because of their high fiber content, sweet potatoes may be helpful for hemorrhoids.

Some homeopathic websites have noted that this potato might help prevent cancer in glands and organs with epithelial tissue because of its high Vitamin A content. Even diabetics have seen benefits of sweet potato consumption because they help to stabilize the blood sugar levels.

Do You Want Some Sweet Fries With That?

One of the largest world's largest food producers, ConAgra, is on a mission to transform the lowly sweet potato from being a vegetable that is eaten on holidays to one that's eaten everyday. The company is spending $155 million to build a sweet potato processing plant in Delhi, Louisiana, with help from U.S. taxpayers in the form of federal income tax credits and more than $30 million from the state of Louisiana.

This plant will turn sweet potatoes, grown in nearby fields, into French fries, waffle fries and other products. In a May 2010 Wall Street Journal article, the company noted that this is the first factory that is dedicated to sweet potatoes in North America. ConAgra boasts sales of $2.2 billion in regular russet potatoes and sweet potatoes that are sold to restaurants and they sell both kinds of potatoes under their Healthy Choice brand to retail grocery stores.

ConAgra's bet on the popularity of sweet potatoes seems to be nicely hedged. The USDA notes that the production (and therefore consumption) of sweet potatoes has risen 30 percent over the last ten years. In their announcement of the new plant, ConAgra noted that the percentage of U.S. restaurants offering at least one sweet potato dish more than doubled between 2005 and 2009, to about 13 percent.

If experience with regular russet potatoes is any indication, the sweet potatoes will likely undergo some genetic modification to make them easier to process. ConAgra says that the sweet potato's shape and lack of color and flavor consistency is a problem when it comes to mass production.

The normal shape of a typical sweet potato has pointed ends and this can result in a loss of 10 to 15 percent of the flesh when they are trimmed for restaurants. Because the sweet potatoes vary in size, sweetness, color and taste, additional steps are necessary to make the end product consistent. Researchers at Louisiana State University are working on these issues and will likely modify the sweet potato to be heavier, brick-shaped and more consistent in terms of color and flavor.

Given the trend toward healthier foods and the investment by a giant food purveyor such as ConAgra, it seems that the sweet potato's time has come. However, in order to move into the "big leagues" of being offered at quick serve restaurants such as McDonalds and Burger King, the sweet potato will have to get a vegetable make-over. For the farmers whose livelihoods depend on the popularity of this potato the phrase "how sweet it is!" comes to mind.