Everybody Has Their First Time

Because it's Gabe's 4th month it's time for him to try solid food. For his first taste of solids, I let him try mashed sweet potato. He kept on gagging but I expected he will do that since that's the first time he had something inside his mouth aside from milk, his teether and his hands. I'm excited to see him really learn to like solid food. Because from my experience with my first son, it's easier to feed babies who are just starting to taste different kinds of food rather than when he already has aversion to certain kinds. He has eaten more variety of veggies when he was babier than today.

Why the sweet potato?

Sweet potato is rated the number one healthiest vegetable by the US based Nutrition Action Healthletter! This root vegetable, the yam, as mostly known in other parts of the US, qualified as an excellent source of vitamin A, a very good source of vitamin C and manganese, and a good source of copper, dietary fiber, vitamin B6, potassium and iron.

Two areas of unique health benefits was discovered on research studies on sweet potatoes. First is that it has significant antioxidant capacities because of its unique root storage proteins. One of the body's most impressive internally produced antioxidants is the glutathione. The proteins in sweet potatoes had about one-third the antioxidant activity of glutathione according to one study. These root proteins also make for the sweet potatoes' healing properties though more studies is needed in this area.

Second is that recently the sweet potato was classified as an "antidiabetic" food. Sweet potato was given this tag because of some recent animal studies showing that sweet potato helped stabilize blood sugar levels and lowered insulin resistance. It has also high concentration of carotenoids where its blood sugar regulatory properties may come from. Again it shows that sweet potato has the unique healing properties now in the area of blood sugar control though once again, more research is needed in this area.

Sweet potatoes are sweet indeed!