Do you know? Open the door┋Want to lose weight? Eat sweet potatoes, you must read this article

Written by: Fang Xia, Director of Xinjiang Nutrition Society, Chief Physician of Clinical Nutrition Department of Red Star Hospital of the 13th Division of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, Registered Nutritionist in China

Reviewer: Tuerxunjiang Maimaitiming, Vice President and Deputy Secretary-General of Xinjiang Nutrition Society, Professor of Nutrition and Food Safety at Xinjiang Medical University

Sweet potatoes, also known as sweet potatoes, are rich in starch, dietary fiber, vitamins, and more than 10 trace elements. In the past, when people were short of food and clothing, sweet potatoes were the staple food in many areas. As people's living standards improve and they are troubled by various sub-health problems, sweet potatoes, a "common food", have not only not withdrawn from the stage of history, but have become more and more "popular".

0 1Where are the nutrients in sweet potatoes?

According to analysis, every 100 grams of sweet potato contains 2.3 grams of protein, 20 milligrams of fat, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 127 kcal of calories, 18 milligrams of calcium, 20 milligrams of phosphorus, 0.4 milligrams of iron, 1.31 milligrams of carotene, 0.12 milligrams of thiamine, 0.04 milligrams of riboflavin, 0.5 milligrams of niacin, and 30 milligrams of ascorbic acid.

0 2What are the benefits of sweet potatoes?

Sweet potatoes help prevent cancer and high blood lipids. The dietary fiber they contain can absorb water in the intestines and swell quickly, thereby increasing the volume of stool and promoting defecation. This helps eaters prevent constipation, promotes the excretion of toxic and harmful substances and cholesterol, and indirectly prevents intestinal cancer and high blood lipids. Of course, the carotene and vitamin C in sweet potatoes themselves have certain antioxidant and anti-cancer effects.

Sweet potatoes can also help you lose weight (control your weight). As the saying goes, "alcohol and meat pass through the intestines, leaving fat on the body." The diet of eating a lot of fish and meat makes fat people everywhere. Controlling your appetite is the hard truth of losing weight. Sweet potatoes are a good food for weight loss. There are three reasons:

01. Sweet potatoes are not high in calories. 100 grams of sweet potatoes have only 1/3 of the calories of the same weight of rice. The fat and carbohydrates are lower than rice and noodles. Therefore, if you eat more sweet potatoes until you are full, the calories and fat will not easily exceed the standard, which can achieve the goal of controlling weight.

02. The dietary fiber in sweet potatoes helps promote the excretion of the "culprit" of obesity - fat and sugar in food.

03. Sweet potatoes have a low glycemic index. This means that after eating sweet potatoes, the digestion and absorption of sugar is slow, and blood sugar is generated stably for a long time after the meal. Eaters are not likely to feel hungry, and the number of snacks is reduced unconsciously. This shows that sweet potatoes can control body weight very well. Therefore, sweet potatoes have a good effect in preventing and treating metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity.

Sweet potatoes are good, but you have to know how to eat them. Cooked sweet potatoes are more beneficial. Sweet potatoes must be cooked before eating, because sweet potatoes contain a lot of starch, and they are covered with a tough cell membrane. When they are cooked and steamed thoroughly, they are easily digested and absorbed by the human body. In addition, during the steaming and heating process, most of the oxidase in the sweet potatoes will be destroyed, which can reduce the production of gas, and the eater is less likely to suffer from symptoms of gastrointestinal discomfort such as bloating and acid reflux.

Of course, sweet potatoes also have their shortcomings, that is, the protein and fat content is low. This is not a big disadvantage, the key is that it is not "loyal" enough. Not only does it not have any, but the dietary fiber it contains will also take away some important nutrients such as protein and calcium from other foods. Therefore, eating sweet potatoes in large quantities for a long time will affect the absorption of some other important nutrients, thus causing malnutrition in the eater.

Key points:

From a health perspective, we can take rice and noodles as staple foods, and eat 80-100 grams of sweet potatoes every day. Sweet potatoes can be eaten with meals or as snacks after breakfast or lunch, which can better help delay hunger in the morning or afternoon. The gastrointestinal function of the elderly is poor, and the gastrointestinal function of infants and young children is not sound, so they should not eat too much sweet potatoes at one time.

Eat sweet potatoes with eggs and milk. Since sweet potatoes contain less protein and fat, they are suitable for consumption with high-quality protein foods such as milk and meat. There are many varieties of sweet potatoes available on the market, including red-hearted ones, purple-hearted ones, and light yellow ones. Different varieties have certain differences in the content of carotene and plant active substances. The redder or darker the color, the higher the content of these ingredients, but the overall difference is not too large. What's important is that the difference in dietary fiber content or other nutrients between them is also small, so in terms of preventing and treating constipation and promoting health, current research has not found which one is the champion among them.