Eating sweet potatoes, taking Vitamin D and giving up smoking for November

The story has been updated to reflect the correct amount of Vitamin D needed daily.

Jennifer LaRue Huget

Writes the Eat, Drink & Be Healthy column and Lean & Fit e-newsletter, and blogs for The Checkup.

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(John McDonnell/THE WASHINGTON POST) - Fiber in sweet potatoes can help reduce cholesterol.

Produce: Sweet potatoes

With Thanksgiving just around the bend, it was easy selecting this month’s produce: sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes (and yams, which are botanically quite different but culinarily interchangeable) have a lot going for them, says Jennifer R. Reilly, a D.C.-based registered dietitian, who blogs about nutrition and has just published “Cooking With Trader Joe’s Cookbook: Skinny Dish!”

“Sweet potatoes taste fantastic,” Reilly says, “and you can’t do them wrong, unless you add lots of brown sugar and marshmallow fluff. Which you don’t need to do, because they’re sweet enough already.”

Sweet potatoes’ orange color signals the presence of antioxidants, particularly betacarotene, the water-soluble form of Vitamin A, Reilly says. “That can stop DNA damage from free radicals, which can show up as wrinkles on your face now and cancer down the road.”

A medium-sized sweet potato has about 100 calories and nearly 4 grams of fiber (about 15 percent of the daily value), “a couple more grams than white, which makes sweet potatoes more filling,” Reilly says. Sweet potatoes also have a relatively low glycemic index, a measure of the rate at which carbohydrates turn into sugar in the bloodstream, Reilly explains. And its fiber helps reduce cholesterol by latching onto it and whisking it out of the body, she says.

Reilly suggests baking sweet potatoes because heat enhances betacarotene’s antioxidant activity, which keeps the glycemic index low.

Another way to try sweet potatoes is by grating them and adding them raw to salads or mixing them into pancake batter or chili. “Or just scrub the outside, boil and mash them and add a bit of salt and a touch of olive oil,” she suggests. “They’re very versatile,” Reilly says.

Recipes:

Crushed sweet potatoes with roasted garlic and ginger

Curried sweet potatoes and apples

Louisiana chicken and sweet potato hash

Mashed sweet potatoes with sour cream and scallions

Vitamin D days:

When daylight savings time ends Sunday, our access to sunshine — and to the Vitamin D that sunlight’s ultraviolet rays help our bodies produce — will be abruptly curtailed. So should we consider compensating by taking Vitamin D supplements?

Most of us probably should, says Anthony Norman, professor of biochemistry and biomedical science at the University of California at Riverside.

Norman says Vitamin D’s contributions to our health extend beyond building strong bones. The vitamin also inhibits cell proliferation, supports the immune system, facilitates insulin secretion, promotes cardiovascular health and more.

Norman is among the many experts who disagree with the Institute of Medicine’s 2010 recommendation that most people consume between 600 International Units (IU) and 800 IU of Vitamin D daily, primarily to support bone health. Norman says most of us need more like 2,000 IU to 4,000 IU per day, an amount he says is “very safe” and likely to boost the level of Vitamin D in our blood to the 40 nanograms per milliliter or more that he says makes us “Vitamin D sufficient.”