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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Healthy Sweet Potato Breakfast Burrito



Sweet Potato Breakfast Burrito

Tonight I made breakfast burritos, not a very healthy dinner if you make it the old fashioned way.  But tonight I decided to try a new ingredient:  sweet potatoes.  I did not tell my husband, a burly construction worker, until after he'd eaten it.  When I told him, he was surprised and commented that it made the burrito taste sweet, like adding maple flavored sausage.  

Most people will argue about what defines a sweet potato.  Is it the deep orange colored root or is that a yam?  For the purpose of this article, it will be the white root, a cousin to the potato, not the orange one.

I was curious to compare the different nutritionally between the potato and the sweet potato.  Which is the better choice?  Using the website http://healthycooking.suite101.com/article.cfm/russet_potatoes_vs_sweet_potatoesI made this discovery:  

Russett Potato:  280 Cal, >1 gram of fat, 7 grams of fiber, nearly 50% daily value (DV) for vitamin C and B6, 63 grams of carbs, 52 grams of starch, 4 grams of sugar, also a good source of potassium and manganese.

Sweet Potato:  270 cal, 0 fat, 9 grams of fiber, over 400% DV in vitamin A, nearly 100% DV for vitamin C, 40% DV for B6, 62 grams of carbs, 22 grams of starch, 19 grams of natural sugar, also a good source of potassium and manganese.

So, overall, the two potatoes are very similar, though the sweet potatoe has more vitamin C and less starch, it has almost 5 times the amount of sugar (though it is natural sugar).  Whatever you choose, I enjoyed the naturally sweet taste of the sweet potato in my breakfast burrito tonight and found I needed less salt and other seasonings because of the flavor the sweet potato brought to this dish. 

1 comment:

  1. Oh My Goodness! Can I just say that I LOVE the White Root Sweet potatoe, I would choose it any day over a potatoe They are so wonderfully delicious! I just have a hard time finding them, where do you get yours? Oh yum just talking about them makes me hungary

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