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Welcome to the Sweet Potato Cafe
At Keith’s Treats and Eats—we just love the sweet potato and we encourage you to enjoy this superfood too! Although sweet potatoes may be part of the Thanksgiving tradition, be sure to add these wonderful naturally sweet vegetables to your meals throughout the year; they are some of the most nutritious vegetables around. Sweet potatoes can be found in your local markets year-round, however they are in season in November and December.
Hang out for a while in our Sweet Potato Café and enjoy!
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Nutritional Benefits of the Sweet Potato
Why is the sweet potato known as the “superfood”? Well this starchy vegetable has so many great benefits. First of all they are naturally fat-free. And if a beta-carotene contest were held, sweet potatoes would tie carrots for first place. The rich, deep orange color of the flesh of sweet potatoes is a good hint that this root vegetable is rich in beta-carotene.
And if you didn’t know beta-carotene helps fight chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease, as well as asthma and arthritis. Also, sweet potatoes are an excellent source of vitamin A and a good source of potassium and vitamin C, B6, riboflavin, copper and folic acid.
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Fun Sweet Potato Facts
- Sweet potatoes were grown in Peru as early as 750 BC.
- Native Americans were growing sweet potatoes when Columbus arrived in 1492.
- George Washington grew sweet potatoes on his farm at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
- George Washington Carver worked extensively with the sweet potato. He developed 118 different products from sweet potatoes, including a mucilage for postal stamps, an economic method for sizing cotton fabrics, dehydrated food and an alternative to corn syrup. Also, in 1896, Carver was appointed head of the Agricultural Department at the Tuskegee Institute where he showed the value of soil regeneration by planting sweet potatoes as the rotation crop for cotton. Carver demonstrated successfully that a diet of peanuts and sweet potatoes could achieve nutrition economically.
- In 1918, during WWI, when the supplies of wheat flour were falling behind, the USDA utilized sweet potato flour to stretch wheat flour in all baked goods.
- African slaves in the South called the sweet potato "nyami" because it reminded them of the starchy, edible tuber of that name that grew in their homeland. The Senegalese word "nyami" was eventually shortened to the word "yam".
- "Yam" also refers to sweet potatoes that are grown in Louisiana. When the orange-fleshed, Puerto Rican variety of sweet potatoes was adopted by Louisiana producers and shippers, they were called "yams" to distinguish them from the white-fleshed sweet potatoes grown in other parts of the country. The yam reference became the trademark for Louisiana-grown weet potatoes.
Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission www.sweetpotato.org
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