November is sweet potato awareness month

One of the most nutritious foods on the traditional Thanksgiving menu is the sweet potato. These orange-skinned root vegetables offer a host of health benefits (especially when cooked without the unnecessary sugar and marshmallows). If you want to raise health consciousness around the dinner table this holiday season, try throwing some of these six sweet potato facts into the conversation:
1. High nutritional value:
A seven-ounce (one cup) serving of sweet potatoes contains 65 percent of the minimum necessary daily amount of Vitamin C. Sweet potatoes are also high in calcium, folate, potassium and beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is an antioxidant which converts to Vitamin A in the body: one serving of sweet potatoes can provide you with as much as 700 percent of the US RDA for Vitamin A. The Center for Science in the Public Interest rates sweet potatoes as the number one most nutritious vegetable because they are so nutritionally rich. One medium-size yam of about six ounces (about five inches by two inches) has 150 calories. Yams have almost double the potassium of a banana! A dietary measure to lower blood pressure is to consume a diet rich in potassium. A potassium-rich diet blunts the effects of salt on blood pressure, may reduce the risk of developing kidney stones and possibly decreases bone loss with age.
2. Low glycemic index:
If you are unfamiliar with this term, the glycemic index indicates the impact a food substance has on blood sugar levels. A high glycemic index means blood sugar levels can spike. Diabetics and others who monitor their blood sugar levels seek to avoid foods with a high glycemic index or load. Sweet potatoes have a glycemic load of only 17.
3. Accessing sweet potatoes' nutritional benefits is easy:
To gain the maximum health benefits from eating sweet potatoes, avoid discarding their skins -- much of their healing potential resides in this portion of the tubers. Also, following the common dieters' fallacy of avoiding all fats reduces your ability to access sweet potatoes' benefits: beta-carotene absorbs more thoroughly into the body when consumed with a small amount of fat. Recent research seems to indicate that steaming or boiling sweet potatoes rather than roasting helps preserve their low glycemic index.
4. Good for your skin:
Their high levels of Vitamin A and beta-carotene means sweet potatoes are a skin superfood. The substances on many pricey skin-care products like retinol and retinoic acid are actually derived from Vitamin A. Plus beta-carotene combats the free radicals which result skin aging.
5. Sweet potatoes are like yoga:
Their high potassium content means sweet potatoes can alleviate muscle cramps which are often related to potassium deficiency. During times of stress, the body uses more potassium,   so eating sweet potatoes can help protect you from the negative health effects of tension.
6. Easy to grow in your garden:
Starting a vegetable garden is a great way both to reduce your grocery bill now, and to reduce your dependency on grocery stores for the long-term. Sweet potatoes make a good beginner's garden crop. Although originally native to South America, this type of tuber only requires 100 frost-free days in order to grow, so you do not have to live in the tropics to harvest some of these nutritionally valuable tubers. Sweet potato plants have fewer diseases than other types of potatoes, and they are relatively undemanding plants, requiring little in the way of water or fertilizer.
Now, before you reach for the candied yams this Thanksgiving, there's something you need to know. They're not actually yams! All this time Americans have been making the mistake of calling sweet potatoes "yams." But there's actually a difference. It turns out sweet potatoes and yams are not even related. They are two different species of root vegetable with very different backgrounds and uses.
So why the confusion? The U.S. government has perpetuated the error of labeling sweet potatoes "yams." In most cases sweet potatoes are labeled with both terms, which just adds to the confusion. Since there are two types of sweet potatoes, one with creamy white flesh and one with orange, the USDA labels the orange-fleshed ones "yams" to distinguish them from the paler variety.  Why call the orange-fleshed ones "yams" in the first place? To understand the difference between yams and sweet potatoes, we have to dig a little deeper.
Sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) come in two main varieties here in the States. One has a golden skin with creamy white flesh and a crumbly texture. The other has a copper skin with an orange flesh that is sweet and soft. All sweet potato varieties generally have the same shape and size -- they are tapered at the ends and much smaller than the aforementioned yams.
Americans have been calling the orange-fleshed variety of sweet potatoes "yams" since colonial times when Africans saw familiarities in them to the tuberous variety. The USDA decided to label them as "yams" to differentiate the two varieties. Both varieties of sweet potato, including "yams" can be widely found in supermarkets.
True yams (family Dioscoreaceae) are native to Africa and Asia and other tropical regions. Yams are starchy tubers that have an almost black bark-like skin and white, purple or reddish flesh and come in many varieties.
The word yam comes from an African word, which means "to eat." The yam held great importance as a food source because it keeps for a long time in storage and is very valuable during the wet season, when food is scarce.
Louisiana has gained a reputation as producing the best sweet potatoes in the world. The LSU AgCenter Sweet Potato Research Station in Chase, La., is the only research station in the United States devoted solely to sweet potato research and development. We too use the term yam locally to refer to what is one of nature’s most nutritious root crops.
But what we really care about is how good they taste! Winter is prime time to purchase sweet potatoes, because they have had time, since being dug, to cure. The curing process, which changes the starch to sugar, is what yields the syrupy sweet flavor that we recognize and love. Whether you bake them, candy them, stuff them, make casseroles or soups with them, season them with cinnamon and sugar, or make pies, muffins or cookies, they are still packed with nutrients. When you are ready to buy your sweet potatoes for the holidays, rest assured, they will stay fresh for quite some time if a temperature of 55-60 degrees is maintained. Just remember to not put them in your refrigerator.
Jennifer Duhon, MS, RD, LDN Nutrition Extension Agent Evangeline, St. Landry, RapidesParish LSU AgCenter, Evangeline Parish Extension Office 337-363-5646.