Off The Shelf #32: Yamuary

Read time: 2 mins. The mighty sweet potato, or yam: nutritious, sustainable and less boring than normal potatoes.

Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) version:

• Sweet potatoes are good for the soil and have a low carbon footprint throughout the production process.

• They’re highly nutritious and can be used in a huge number of delicious ways.

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For the last couple of weeks I’ve gone a bit generalist, harping on about Veganuary and gut health. So this week I thought I’d stay plant-based (don’t worry carnivores, it won’t last forever) and target a specific tuber with a myriad of environmental and health benefits.

Sweet potatoes are sustainable:

• The crop is a perennial, meaning it lives for 3+ years. So it doesn’t need to be replanted often, and the soil is disturbed less frequently. Soil which isn’t constantly turned over and exposed to sunlight is better for biodiversity.

• Every part of the plant can be used: leaves, roots, vines. The underused parts of the plant can be used for animal feed, and studies have suggested that the vines can reduce methane emissions when eaten by cows.

• While they’re typically better grown in warmer regions (eg Latin America), they can be grown anywhere with some help from a greenhouse, so it is possible to avoid food miles. Here’s a guide to how you can grow your own. If you’re in the UK, peak planting season will be the summer.

• But if you can’t find them locally, don’t dispair: food miles are only really harmful if food is flown - and only 0.16% of food actually travels this way. Sweet potatoes have a long shelf-life, so they can definitely withstand long distances at sea, which keeps the carbon footprint low.

  • We could even go so far as saying that sweet potatoes grown abroad might be more environmentally friendly than at home, if the local crop has had a lot of energy expended to create an optimal artificial growing environment.

Sweet potatoes are nutritious:

• We’re in superfood territory here. Sorry to break it to you, but normal potatoes don’t count as one of your five-a-day. Sweet potatoes do.

• They’re high in fibre, which can aid digestion and help gut health.

• They’re a great source for Vitamin A, which helps night vision and eye health. Stuck in a hostile vegetable patch at night and can’t see a way out, but hate carrots? Sweet potatoes could aid your escape and might just save your life.

Sweet potatoes are extremely tasty:

• There’s a reason all the trendy burger places in London offer the option to replace ‘normal’ fries with sweet potato fries for an additional cost: it’s because they’re delicious.

• But it’s not just chips or simple roasties you can whip up from sweet potatoes. Here are some recipe ideas to elevate your yam game.

  • Ottolenghi leading the charge with roasted sweet potato and pickled onions

  • Always good in a curry, try this one from Olive Magazine

  • A sweet potato risotto will help get you through the longer, darker months.

  • And for those with a sweet tooth, you’re spoilt for choice here…

Further reading:

• The health benefits of sweet potatoes (BBC)

• Sweet Potato Is The Caribbean’s Regenerative Giant (Forbes)

• Most food travels by sea, not air (Our World In Data)

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  Data as of 15 January 2023. Just to keep my senior politician readership out of hot water on Sunday morning TV. Price of milk represented by the average price of comparable 2-pint bottles at 5 major retailers in the United Kingdom (Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury’s Waitrose and Marks & Spencer). Index is equally weighted and based on online prices. Methodology is purely proprietary and utterly unscientific. For actual price data that might be remotely useful for economic analysis, try the Office for National Statistics.

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