Can You Still Eat Sprouted Sweet Potatoes? Benefits, Planting and Harvesting, and Anti-Cancer Ways to Eat Them Explained
Sweet potato is also called fan shu, shan yu, hong shao, tian shu, bai shu, fan yu, fan ge, jin shu, di luo bo, and di gua. It is an annual herbaceous plant and is grown all over China.So can you still eat it if it sprouts? What are its benefits and effects? When should you plant and harvest it? How should you eat it to fight cancer?
Can you still eat a sweet potato after it sprouts?
After a sweet potato sprouts, it does not produce substances harmful to the human body the way a potato does. As long as you remove the sprouts that have grown on the sweet potato, it is safe to eat, and there will certainly be no poisoning symptoms like the ones in the legends. But there is one thing everyone should note: after a sweet potato sprouts, because large amounts of nutrients and water are lost, it not only tastes worse but also loses its food value. As for the claim that eating sprouted sweet potatoes causes poisoning, there is no basis for it at all, and it is unscientific; it is purely a misconception in daily life.
What benefits and effects does sweet potato have?
Benefits
1. Medicinal effects:
The tuberous root of the sweet potato contains active ingredients and has effects such as fighting cancer, protecting the heart, preventing pulmonary emphysema and diabetes, aiding weight loss, and improving appearance. It has the reputation of being a “longevity food.”
Sweet potato contains unique bioflavonoid components that can promote smooth bowel movements and effectively inhibit the occurrence of breast cancer and colon cancer; it can improve the function of digestive organs, nourish the liver and kidneys, and can also effectively treat hepatitis and jaundice.
Sweet potato protein is of high quality and can make up for the nutritional deficiencies in rice and white flour. Regular consumption can improve the body's utilization of nutrients in staple foods, keeping people healthy and prolonging life.
Sweet potato is rich in dietary fiber and has the special function of preventing sugar from being converted into fat; it can promote gastrointestinal motility and prevent constipation, and is used to treat hemorrhoids and anal fissures. It also has a certain effect on preventing rectal cancer and colon cancer.
Sweet potato has a special protective effect on the mucous membranes of human organs. It can inhibit cholesterol deposition, maintain blood vessel elasticity, prevent atrophy of connective tissue in the liver and kidneys, and prevent the occurrence of collagen diseases.
2. External use:
Applying the tuber as a poultice treats sores; the leaf juice applied topically treats eczema; the vine applied as a poultice treats snake and dog bites. Applying young sweet potato seedling leaves, tender leaves of water spinach, and brown sugar to the navel has certain therapeutic effects on nephritic edema and ascites due to cirrhosis. Brazil sweet potato Simon No. 1 is the variety with the highest medicinal efficacy in clinical application of traditional Chinese medicine, and it has been used for difficult cases such as cancer and type 17 diabetes.
Effects
1. Anti-cancer:
Scientists have found that sweet potato contains a chemical substance called dehydroepiandrosterone, which can be used to prevent colon cancer and breast cancer. The nutrients in the diet with the strongest anti-cancer effects are β-carotene (a precursor of vitamin A), vitamin C, and folic acid, and sweet potato is relatively rich in all three.
One small sweet potato (about 2 liang in weight) can provide 2 times the amount of vitamin A needed by the human body each day, one third of the daily requirement of vitamin C, and about 50 micrograms of folic acid; its dietary fiber content is higher than that of a bowl of oatmeal porridge. Eating sweet potato regularly helps maintain normal folic acid levels in the human body. Too low a level of folic acid in the body increases the risk of cancer. The high content of dietary fiber in sweet potato has the effect of promoting gastrointestinal motility and preventing constipation and colorectal cancer.
2. Good for the heart
Sweet potato is rich in potassium, β-carotene, folic acid, vitamin C, and vitamin B6. All 5 of these components help prevent cardiovascular disease. Potassium helps maintain the balance of fluids and electrolytes in human cells and maintains normal blood pressure and heart function.
β-Carotene and vitamin C have the effect of resisting lipid oxidation and preventing atherosclerosis. Supplementing folic acid and vitamin B6 helps lower the level of homocysteine in the blood. The latter can damage arterial blood vessels and is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
3. Preventing pulmonary emphysema
Why do some long-term smokers live to over 90 years old without developing pulmonary emphysema? It may be related to the abundance of vitamin A in their daily diet. Researchers suggest that smokers or passive smokers should best eat some vitamin A-rich foods such as sweet potato every day to prevent pulmonary emphysema.
4. Anti-diabetic effect
Researchers in Japan found that after diabetic obese rats ate white-skinned sweet potato for 4 weeks and 6 weeks, their blood insulin levels decreased by 26% and 60%, respectively; they also found that sweet potato can effectively inhibit the rise in blood sugar levels in diabetic obese rats after oral glucose; eating sweet potato can also reduce the levels of triglycerides and free fatty acids in diabetic rats.
The research suggests that white-skinned sweet potato has a certain anti-diabetic effect. A clinical study at the University of Vienna in Austria found that after patients with type 2 diabetes took white-skinned sweet potato extract, their insulin sensitivity improved, which helps control blood sugar.
When should sweet potatoes be planted and harvested?
1. Sweet potatoes are planted by cuttings from mid-to-late April to early and mid-May. For sweet potato growth, the temperature should be suitable when the local average temperature is stable above 15 degrees, and the soil temperature of the shallow layer reaches 17-18 degrees. Do not seek to plant early in a one-sided way, in order to prevent slow seedling growth or serious gaps in the stand.
2. Generally speaking, sweet potatoes are harvested in October. If they are planted in May, then the best harvest period is late September or early October. If they are planted in June, then the best harvest time should be around late October. This needs to be judged according to the planting time in different regions, but overall, October is the best period for harvesting sweet potatoes. Search
When the soil temperature is around 18℃, the weight of the sweet potato increases very little; when the soil temperature is around 15℃, the sweet potato stops expanding; when the soil temperature is below 9℃ for a long time, chilling injury will occur. Therefore, harvesting of sweet potatoes generally begins when the soil temperature is 18℃, and harvesting should be completed before the killing frost.
Spring sweet potatoes used for slicing and drying, or those after clearing the crop to plant winter wheat, are generally harvested before Cold Dew; summer sweet potatoes kept for seed are harvested before Frost's Descent; sweet potatoes for storage and eating are harvested a little later, but must be fully harvested before the killing frost.
How should sweet potatoes be eaten to fight cancer?
1. Sweet potatoes are best eaten at noon, because the calcium contained in sweet potatoes needs 4 to 5 hours to be absorbed in the human body. After eating sweet potatoes at noon, the afternoon sunlight can just promote calcium absorption and will not affect the absorption of calcium from other foods at dinner. Eating sweet potatoes at night means more sugar, which the body cannot absorb all at once for the time being, and it is also easy to cause bloating.
2. Do not eat them together with sweet foods. Sweet potatoes themselves contain relatively high carbohydrates and have a certain sweetness. If they are eaten together with sweet foods, the possibility of gastroesophageal reflux will increase.
3. Do not eat roasted sweet potatoes with the skin on. Sweet potato skin contains relatively more alkaloids, and eating too much can cause gastrointestinal discomfort. Experts suggest that roasted sweet potatoes are best not eaten with the skin on, because sweet potatoes contaminated by black spot fungus are not easy to identify after roasting. Therefore, do not eat sweet potatoes with black spots or those that are burnt, as they may cause poisoning. Sweet potatoes roasted over coal produce large amounts of harmful substances such as sulfur dioxide during roasting, and eating too much is also bad for health.
4. Do not eat them on an empty stomach. Sweet potatoes have a high sugar content, and eating them on an empty stomach produces large amounts of stomach acid. When there is too much stomach acid, it irritates the gastric mucosa and causes acid reflux, giving people a feeling of heartburn. Sweet potatoes also contain an oxidase that produces large amounts of carbon dioxide gas in the gastrointestinal tract, easily causing symptoms such as abdominal bloating and belching. In addition, sweet potatoes should not be eaten raw, because the cell membranes of the starch in raw sweet potatoes have not been broken down by high temperature and are very difficult for the human body to digest. Also, sweet potatoes are best eaten mixed with rice and white flour, which can improve the nutritional value of the staple food. Sweet potatoes are called by experts the health food with the most balanced nutrition. As long as you eat them the right way, they can help people “live long and suffer fewer illnesses.”