SO, I bought a sweet potato to have for dinner tonight.  I have a cold (first week of school, and the kiddies are already spreading germs!) and I can't taste anything, so I figured I would eat something I don't really like. Haha.  Aside from the potato, I'm having broccoli with Dragonfly's Bulk uncheese (my first time!  never like cheese on broccoli, but I'm diggin this uncheese stuff!) and miso soup. 

I'm gonna make some baked sweet potato with agave nectar "dressing" right now. See what y'all did to me!  :P

At my house growing up I think we had more sweet then white potatoes. My brother and I would add brown sugar and butter to the potato to sweeten them up even more.

Ooo! Oooo! Ooo! (she says, waving her raised hand a la Horshack--I just dated myself!) I have GOT to try the baked yam spread with some miso! I love savoury yams too--gotta put this to the test. The white misotato was so good, I bet the yam is better!

I go down the olive oil and salt route with a little finely chopped red chilli (no seeds or membrane).  They're not very traditional over here but they are catching on.  To be honest, I usually use them in soups or cooked with spinach, chick peas and coconut milk in a curry.  White potato curries are also good (though not so much with coconut), but a completely different animal.

I had a sweet potato for lunch today and I tried the EB and Agave combo, it was delish.  Some of my coworkers were looking at me crazy.  Sorry I do not eat McDonalds every day like they do (well I never eat McDonalds).

Potatoes are good for you.  They are a vegetable, unless you are diagnosed with diabetes, then you count them as a carb, since they have a lot, but you also count sweet potatoes as a carb, and soymilk (even unsweetened) and fruit.  Any carbohydrate, with the exception of fiber, whose bonds cannot be broken, will be converted into glucose (a simple carbohydrate if there ever was one!) for absorption into the blood stream, and eventual use as fuel, or convetted into glycogen and stored in the muscle for later use.  A carbohydrate is a carbohydrate and they all raise your blood sugar.  A simple carbohydrate is sugar, potatoes have fiber, lots of vitamin C, potassium, B6, copper, manganese, all sorts of good things. 

I am in my second year of a Masters in Clinical Nutrition program, and I just completed a dietetic internship, where I was working as a Dietitian in a veteran's medical center.  Through talking about food with sick men for 8 hours a day for a year, I had to come to the poor potato's defense numerous times, it is so common for people to vilify potatoes, I think it must be the white color, they associate them with white sugar and flour, people make the same mistake with white mushrooms and cauliflower, but they are full of good things.  It all smells a little like Atkins to me.

remember those potato clocks from when you were a kid, they work because the potatoes have enough minerals in them to carry a charge and conduct electricity.

And lets not forget the Irish Potato Famine, potatoes have an important history and place in a healthy diet.  :)

Don't get me wrong I eat more sweet potatoes than regular, I just like em, actually I don't ever eat sweet potatoes, I eat yams.  I just wanted to make sure that regular potatoes were getting a little love too ;D

Oh and totally off subject, but in the VA medical center I had an 85 year old vegan patient, sadly he had just had a heart attack, and was there for a bypass graft, anyways, I went in to see him and make sure we were going to have enough to feed him during his stay, and make sure he takes B12 at home, and he told me that it was fine to send him chicken!!  I can't really blame him though, the vegetarian food is terrible in that hospital, and the vegan food is fruit, veggies, plain raw tofu, plain noodles, and soymilk.  That wouldn't get old or anything.  He was still pretty fun, he kept telling me that "nuts are always in style" and "whole grains are always in style", but I digress.

OK, so I'm still suffering from sidebar disease, but someone else brought up yams and nutrition...

In "The Colour Purple" they speak of a blood disease that is ameliorated or cured (?) by eating lots and lots of yams. Does anyone know a) is this true b) what disease it might refer to? I thought of sickle cell anemia, since they speak of fever, blood clots and pain...but that term paper was a looong time ago.

OK, here goes.  Yams are high in thiocyanate, which can help normalize the sickle shaped red blood cells in sickle cell anemia, thus reducing the symptoms of the disease.  The one other thing I remember form biology, OK I am lying apparently I remember all sorts of almost useful facts, is that sickle cell anemia is a biological adaption to protect the body from malaria, so in Africa, where these two diseases are common it is sort of like the lesser of two evils, because one you reduce the sickle shape of the cell, you are once again prone to get malaria.  I guess if you are going to sub sharan africa, try to aviod yams for a few weeks, just to be safe ;)