Many benefits of eating yam, its nutrition is mild and suitable for daily consumption

Yam is the tuber of a plant in the Dioscoreaceae family. In China it is both an everyday vegetable and a traditional food-therapy ingredient, often called huaishan. Its flesh is fine and dense, with a slippery mucilage after peeling, and when steamed it becomes mealy and soft. It can be served as a dish or partly replace staple foods, making it a very common root vegetable on the table.

From a nutritional standpoint, yam mainly provides starch, dietary fiber and mucilage protein, and contains minerals such as potassium and B vitamins. Dietary fiber helps with intestinal movement and brings a strong feeling of fullness; mucilage protein gives it a smooth, tender texture. Traditionally it is also considered mild in nature, easy to digest after steaming or boiling, and suitable for daily consumption by the elderly and people with weaker stomachs and intestines.

There are many common varieties with noticeably different textures. Iron stick yam (tiegun yam) is slender with high starch content, and becomes dense and sweet after steaming; ordinary vegetable yam is thick and watery, better for stir-frying or stewing soup; in addition there are red yam, purple yam and Taiwan, China native varieties and other local cultivars, each with its own flavor. When selecting, choose ones with intact skin, few fibrous roots, a white cross-section, and a firm, heavy feel in the hand.

The ways to eat it are very flexible: steamed yam, yam porridge, yam stewed with pork ribs, and stir-fried yam are all common, and it can also be blended into yam paste or mixed into rice paste for the family. Two things need attention: first, the mucilage may cause skin itching when peeling, so you can wear gloves, or steam it first and then peel; second, yam is not low in starch, so when eating it you should best reduce rice and other staple foods accordingly, and people who need to control blood sugar should pay even more attention to portion size. Overall, including yam in the daily diet is a mild and affordable way of eating for nourishment.