Curried Mustard Greens & Garbanzo Beans with Sweet Potatoes - Healthy Food Tip and Recipe

healthy food tip and recipe

Today's Recipe If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...
This complete meat-free meal is an easy to prepare, colorful, and flavorful addition to your Healthiest Way of Eating. The pungent taste of mustard greens and the sweetness of the sweet potatoes is a wonderful combination giving you a great way to enjoy the many health benefits from this recipe.

Curried Mustard Greens & Garbanzo Beans with Sweet Potatoes
Prep and Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:

• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced thin
• 1 medium onion, cut in half and sliced thin
• 3 medium cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 TBS + 1/4 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/2 tsp curry powder
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1 bunch mustard greens, stems removed, chopped
• 1 15 oz can (no BPA) diced tomatoes
• 2 cups or 1 15 oz can (no BPA) garbanzo beans, drained
• 3 TBS extra virgin olive oil
• salt and white pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Bring 2" of water to a boil in a steamer with a tight fitting lid. Peel and slice sweet potatoes into ½" slices so they will steam quickly (7 minutes).
2. While steaming potatoes, slice onion and garlic. Heat 1 TBS broth in 12 inch skillet. Healthy Sauté onion in broth over medium heat for about 4-5 minutes stirring frequently, until translucent. Add 1/4 cup broth, garlic, curry powder, turmeric, and mustard greens. Stir occasionally until mustard greens are wilted, about 5 minutes. Add garbanzo beans, diced tomatoes, salt and pepper. Cook for another 5 minutes.
3. Mash sweet potatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper. If you need to thin potatoes more you can add a little broth. Serve mustard greens with mashed sweet potatoes.

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In-Depth Nutritional Profile for Curried Mustard Greens & Garbanzo Beans with Sweet Potatoes
Healthy Food Tip

The Latest News About Sweet Potatoes

How sweet it is for your health to eat sweet potatoes! Not only do they taste like dessert, but they also provide some surprising health benefits. Many people think about sweet potatoes as being nothing more than plain old potatoes that can tweak our taste buds with some extra flavor. Yet cutting-edge research on sweet potatoes tells us that nothing could be further from the truth as they have so many unique nutritional benefits to offer! Sweet potatoes feature a surprising number of nutrient categories responsible for the health benefits of this underappreciated tuber. Among these categories are antioxidants, anti-inflammatory nutrients, and blood sugar-regulating nutrients. Each category brings with it valuable health benefits.

What's New and Beneficial About Sweet Potatoes

• Orange-fleshed sweet potatoes may be one of nature's unsurpassed sources of beta-carotene. Several recent studies have shown the superior ability of sweet potatoes to raise our blood levels of vitamin A. This benefit may be particularly true for children. In several studies from Africa, sweet potatoes were found to contain between 100-1,600 micrograms (RAE) of vitamin A in every 3.5 ounces-enough, on average, to meet 35% of all vitamin A needs, and in many cases enough to meet over 90% of vitamin A needs (from this single food alone).
• Sweet potatoes are not always orange-fleshed on the inside but can also be a spectacular purple color. Sometimes it's impossible to tell from the skin of sweet potato just how rich in purple tones its inside will be. That's because scientists have now identified the exact genes in sweet potatoes (IbMYB1 and IbMYB2) that get activated to produce the purple anthocyanin pigments responsible for the rich purple tones of the flesh. The purple-fleshed sweet potato anthocyanins-primarily peonidins and cyanidins-have important antioxidant properties and anti-inflammatory properties. Particularly when passing through our digestive tract, they may be able to lower the potential health risk posed by heavy metals and oxygen radicals. For more details on purple-fleshed and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, please see our Description section below.
• Most dry beans and tubers have their own unique storage proteins. Soybeans have glycinins, potatoes have patatins, yams have dioscorins, and corn has zeins. While researchers have long been aware of sporamins-storage proteins in sweet potato -only recently has research shown some of their unique antioxidant properties. The potential health benefits of the sweet potato sporamins in helping prevent oxidative damage to our cells should not be surprising since sweet potatoes produce sporamins whenever subjected to physical damage to help promote healing.
• It's important to have some fat in your sweet potato-containing meals if you want to enjoy the full beta-carotene benefits of this root vegetable. Recent research has shown that a minimum of 3-5 grams of fat per meal significantly increases our uptake of beta-carotene from sweet potatoes. Of course, this minimal amount of fat can be very easy to include. In our Healthy Mashed Sweet Potatoes recipe, for example, we include 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, and with just this one tablespoon, each of our 4 servings for this delicious recipe provides 3.5 grams of fat.
• Some nutritional benefits from sweet potatoes simply may not be achievable unless you use steaming or boiling as your cooking method. Recent studies show excellent preservation of sweet potato anthocyanins with steaming, and several studies comparing boiling to roasting have shown better blood sugar effects (including the achievement of a lower glycemic index, or GI value) with boiling. The impact of steaming is particularly interesting, since only two minutes of steaming have been show to deactivate peroxidase enzymes that might otherwise be able to break down anthocyanin phytonutrients found in the sweet potato. In fact, with these peroxidase enzymes deactivated, natural anthocyanin extracts from sweet potato used for food coloring may be even more stable than the synthetic dye Red 40! This benefit isn't limited to the food's appearance since the anthocyanins have great health benefits as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients.

WHFoods Recommendations

Sweet potatoes don't have to take a long time to prepare. Cutting them into ½" slices and Healthy Steaming them for just 7 minutes not only brings out their great flavor but helps to maximize their nutritional value. And you can add cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or cloves for extra flavor and nutrition. For more on The Healthiest Way of Cooking Sweet Potatoes, see the How to Enjoy section of the sweet potatoes write-up on the website.

Health Benefits

Sweet potatoes provide numerous health benefits including:

• Antioxidant properties
• Anti-inflammatory benefits
• Blood sugar support

For more details on sweet potatoes' health benefits, see this section of our sweet potatoes write-up.

Nutritional Profile

The orange-flesh sweet potatoes are exceedingly rich in beta-carotene. The purple-flesh varieties are outstanding sources of anthocyanins, especially peonidins and cyanidins. Both types of sweet potatoes are rich in unique phytonutrients, including polysaccharide-related molecules called batatins and batatosides. Sweet potatoes also include storage proteins called sporamins that have unique antioxidant properties. Sweet potatoes are an excellent source of immune-supportive vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene). They are also a very good source of free-radical-scavenging vitamin C and manganese. In addition, sweet potatoes are a good source of bone-building copper; heart-healthy dietary fiber, vitamin B6, and potassium; and energy-producing iron.
For more on this nutrient-rich vegetable, including references related to this Latest News, see our write-up on sweet potatoes.