health benefits of sweet potatoes

We love sweet potatoes. This versatile, orange root vegetable can be enjoyed a variety of ways including baked whole, smashed, or cut up as fries. They are delicious but also offer several health benefits. Let’s take a look:

• Full of vitamins and minerals
One cup of baked sweet potato with skin contains 180 calories, 41g carbs, 4g protein, 6.6g fiber, 769% of your daily value (DV) of vitamin A, 65% DV vitamin C, 50% DV manganese, along with 15-25% of B6, potassium, copper, and niacin. Needless to say, it's a very diverse nutrition profile.

• Healthy Vision
Beta-carotene, which gives sweet potatoes their bright color, can also support eye health and prevent vision loss when it’s converted to vitamin A in your body. This vitamin helps support the formation of light-detecting receptors in your eyes.

• Gut Health
Two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble, are found in sweet potatoes. These can’t be digested by your body and help to keep you regular as well as feed healthy gut bacteria and keep intestinal linings strong.

• Immunity Boost
Vitamin A and beta-carotene are critical to a healthy immune system and sweet potatoes have almost 7 times your daily requirement. It reduces inflammation in your gut and keeps it able to fight off disease-causing pathogens that attack your digestive system.

• Brain Boost
Sweet potatoes of the purple variety have been shown to enhance memory and learning in mice. The high amounts of antioxidants reduce inflammation and prevent free-radical damage in the brain. Studies are yet to be done with humans and this vegetable specifically, but we already know diets rich in antioxidants can reduce the chance of dementia by 13%.