Baked sweet potatoes for dinner

After a wonderful long walk along the river enjoying the fall foliage, I decided to make sweet potatoes for dinner, along with raw almonds, lightly steamed kale, and a glass of homemade vegan blueberry kefir.

Sweet potatoes are packed with beta-carotene, which gives them their bright orange color. They are also a good source of various vitamins, and minerals, as well as fiber and starch. They contain only a little protein, and almost no fat. Almonds, on the other hand, contain a significant amount of protein, along with a lot of fat(mostly the healthy kind) as well as fiber.

Kale is a type of cabbage, and is loaded with powerful carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which are said to be good for the eyes. Kale is also a good source of fiber.

The vegan blueberry kefir has a lot of anthocyanins, which may be helpful for exercise recovery and may help prevent some diseases, and since it was fermented also has probiotic benefits. It was wonderfully effervescent, and a bit sour, a nice compliment to the sweet potatoes and almonds. It has a tincture of alcohol in it, making it sort of like the “red wine” of the meal.

It took about 45 minutes in the oven to bake the sweet potatoes. I added a dash of cinnamon to spice things up. They were very delicious, and all in all, a terrific vegan autumn meal. And very colorful too!

Pendant that I am, it must be noted that sweet potatoes are not related to potatoes. They are in completely different plant families. Sweet potatoes are related to morning glories, and potatoes are in the nightshade family, which means they are closely related to nightshades like tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers and tobacco, yes, tobacco!

Besides this, sweet potatoes are often called yams, though they are not related to true yams. While they are both tubers, real yams are much bigger and starchier, and only taste a little like sweet potatoes. True yams only grow in the tropics or sub-tropics, and are originally from Africa. They tend to be sold in Caribbean or African markets.

For more information: Sweet Potato and Yam Differences

Other terrific vegan meal ideas:

• Auntie Jill’s Super Yummy Eggplant Pasta
• Rolled Eggplant with Cannellini Pine nut Filling and Asparagus Green bean Salad with Caper Dressing
• Lovely and Warming Mung Bean & Lentil Soup
• Amaranth, Red Lentil, & Chia Seed Patties
• Moroccan Chickpea Tagine
• Autumn lentil and vegetable stew

Eat more vegetables for sun protection?

From Wikipedia

We all know that fruits and vegetables are good for us, but can the phyto-nutrients in vegetables protect us from sun damage?

Lycopene-rich products and dietary photoprotection:

Plant constituents such as carotenoids and flavonoids are involved in the light-protecting system in plants and contribute to the prevention of UV damage in humans. As micronutrients they are ingested with the diet and are distributed into light-exposed tissues where they provide systemic photoprotection. beta-Carotene is an endogenous photoprotector, and its efficacy to prevent UV-induced erythema formation has been demonstrated in intervention studies. Lycopene is the major carotenoid of the tomato and is a very efficient singlet oxygen quencher in the group of carotenoids. Following ingestion of lycopene or tomato-derived products rich in lycopene, photoprotective effects have been demonstrated. After 10-12 weeks of intervention a decrease in the sensitivity towards UV-induced erythema was observed in volunteers. Dietary carotenoids may contribute to life-long protection against harmful UV radiation.

Source

Institut für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie I, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, P.O. Box 101007, D-40001 Düsseldorf, Germany.

It looks like they may help, but they are not as effective as the sunscreen lotion you apply to the skin. The phyto-nutrients that seem to be the most helpful for sun protection are carotenoids, especially lycopene which has a reddish pigment. Lycopene occurs plentifully in tomatoes, so feast on them fresh, add generous amounts of tomato sauce to pasta, add it to soups, or bake some stuffed tomatoes. Don’t take lycopene or other carotenoids in pill form though, since in isolation they can be either useless or even toxic. Other good sources of lycopene are papaya, guava, and pink grapefruit.

Dietary sun protection isn’t meant to replace sunscreen lotion. Apply sunscreen generously to your skin before venturing out during the day, even on cloudy days, unless you want to your skin to age prematurely or increase your risk of skin cancer.

Even if eating certain fruits and vegetables didn’t help protect from sun damage, there’s a thousand other reasons to eat more of them anyway.