- 1 small sweet potato, or
- 1 small swede (if you want to keep it light)
- (optional) cinnamon
- (optional) 1 tsp coconut oil
- (optional) fresh parsley or coriander
- (optional) rosemary
- (optional) salt
Swede or Sweet Potato?
In spite of its fairly sweet flavour, swede (also known as Rutabaga) has less sugar and more fibre than sweet potato, and has 44% less calories. Moreover, it is extremely high in vitamin C (although most of it is lost in cooking), whereas sweet potato is higher in B6, and they both contain small amounts of Magnesium and Calcium. Finally, swede is shown to only contain a very small amount of salicylate — as opposed to sweet potato, which is considered off limits, if you’re salicylate sensitive.
For all these reasons, swapping sweet potato for swede every now and then is definitely recommended, if you’re aiming at improving your nutrition without developing food sensitivities.
However, due to its sugar content (particularly when baked), sweet potato has its perfect place in the diet too. For example, it makes for a perfect post-workout source of carbs. In an ideal post-workout situation, to activate and maximise muscle protein synthesis, a great insulinic response is desired, and consuming carbs like a baked sweet potato (along with easily absorbable protein containing leucine) will stimulate such response. By contrast, you don’t really want your insulin to spike when you’re about to go to bed, therefore swede might be more indicated for a dinner side dish.
How about Pumpkin?
Pumpkin can be considered the middle ground between sweet potato and swede: it has even less calories than swede and, similarly to swede, it is fairly low in salicylates; however, similarly to sweet potato, pumpkin has a high GI (glycemic index) (75), but a very low GL (glycemic load) (4), meaning that in spite of its sugar contents, your insulin will not be likely to spike when consuming it (that’s because of the high fibre content). All the below recipes can be adapted to pumpkin, meaning that you have one more option to add variety into your diet! 🙂
Sweet Potato
Preheat the oven at 220C
Method 1
Half the sweet potato and bake it (skin facing up) for about 20 minutes. Peel off and garnish with cinnamon. Enjoy!
Method 2
Peel sweet potato off and cut it into fry-like strips. Rub strips into coconut oil and sprinkle with salt. Place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes on each side, or until golden (resembling fries). It tastes nice when garnished with fresh parsley or coriander, and served with a light dipping sauce, such as Tahini or marinara sauce. Enjoy!
Method 3*
*slightly off topic, as it’s not a baking method…
If you want to keep it super clean without giving up the taste of sweet potato, then you can boil it, rather than baking: both GI and GL (what actually spikes your insulin) will drop dramatically from 94 (GI) and 42 (GL) to 44 (GI) and 11 (GL), transforming both values from high to moderate. However it might not taste as nice as when it’s baked, so alternating these methods is an excellent way to watch your sugar intake while still enjoying your food.
In case you were wondering why there’s such a great difference in GI and GL when cooking the same food in 2 different ways, that’s because the baking process transforms some of the starch into glucose, thus changing the food’s profile. Breaking down starches (complex carbohydrates) into simple sugars is what our metabolism will eventually do when “digesting” food. However, if such sugars are already partly broken down, there’ll be less work left for our digestive system to do and it’ll take less time. This will cause an accelerated insulin response, which might not always be ideal (for example if you have to sit down at your desk for many hours and won’t be able to use all the glucose that insulin will have carried into your system).
Swede
Preheat the oven at 220C
Peel swede off and cut into approximately 1 inch cubes. Sprinkle with chopped rosemary, salt and coconut oil. Bake covered until soft (about 40 minutes). Enjoy!