EATS SHOOTS AND LEAVES

Sweet potato superhero

Susan Jane White Eats shoots & leaves

The sweet potato is a superhero vegetable, unfairly rejected in this country. Which is odd, considering our partiality to a good spud. It’s like we almost take offence that sweet potatoes are tastier than our celebrated Wexford spuds. But let’s iron out the blasphemy: neither is native to Irish soil. Bonkers!

Sweet potatoes are raging with immune-pumping allies such as vitamin C, beta-carotene and legions of antioxidants; the perfect ally for autumn, and the war against sniffles.

Despite its name, the sweet potato actually contains less sugar than a normal white potato. This makes it beneficially lower on the glycemic index. Twit-twoo. All this means is that the energy you get from a sweet potato releases slowly into the bloodstream, drip-feeding our smile dial and our battery.

On the other hand, high-glycemic foods release their energy much faster, tripwiring our sugar levels and fangs. With foods such as white bread, pasta and cereal, we experience a sudden surge, followed by an almighty low. Sound familiar?

The catch with high-glycemic foods is that we often look for something sugary to counteract this low. Let’s say you grab a cappuccino and a bun in the afternoon to boost your lagging energy. Say you do it five times a week. This would amount to a whopping €520 and an extra 52,000 calories per year, just to remedy your afternoon slump. Foly Huck.

But if you fuel your bod with low-glycemic foods, such as this ‘pumpkin’ bread, then your bod will fuel you. Sweet potatoes are good stunt doubles when recipes call for pumpkin. Even pumpkin bread. Nice one.