Sweet Potatoes

Tripalot wrote:
We are having a disagreement in our house - looking for a referee.
I say you serve sweet potatoes as an alternative to regular potatoes cooked anyway you prefer.. DH says sweet potatoes are a vegetable that you serve along with regular potatoes. This is what his mother did - so therefore must be right!

Who is right? Sweet potatoes - vegetable or potato? ? ?

The Boston Globe wrote:
Potatoes have fallen from grace in recent years, as health authorities have argued that starch-filled spuds shouldn’t be counted as a vegetable in the diet. The USDA recently proposed reducing the amount of potatoes served in school lunchrooms. But the attack on potatoes leaves some confusion: Should sweet potatoes and other tubers and roots also be lumped into this category?

Linda Antinoro, a registered dietitian at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, says that when evaluating meals, she and her colleagues consider both the potato and sweet potato to be starches. Like white potatoes, sweet potatoes have a high amount of starch — an abundant carbohydrate found in all kinds of plants — compared to other vegetables, which means that a portion of sweet potatoes has about triple the calories of a similar volume of carrots or other vegetable.

However, Antinoro adds, “we would encourage people to eat a sweet potato rather than other starches.’’ By replacing your white potato, rice, pasta, or bread with a sweet potato, you’re adding a whopping dose of beta-carotene, as well as vitamin C, potassium, and other vitamins and minerals.

If you eat sweet potatoes with their skins, you also get a lot of fiber, which can help keep blood sugar levels from spiking after a meal and may also discourage overeating by contributing a sense of fullness. The American Diabetes Association lists sweet potatoes as one of 10 “superfoods,’’ which carry a high nutrition content without sending blood sugar soaring. While it’s not true that the skin contains most of the vitamins and minerals, it contains a large portion of their fiber.

For large gatherings I used to serve a sweet tater dish (mostly yams pureed with an equal amt of cold "buttah"; pure decadency) and white potatoes served however just as my mother and grandmothers did but nowadays, I replace a cauliflower dish for the white taters more often than not.

HTH!