The only thing I was getting at with my first comment was that people tend to underestimate the carb load and insulin impact of “real” foods like yams and sweet potatoes… And other foods too (for the less paleo among us), like whole grains, rice, potatoes, dairy, and corn. Whatever scale you want to measure it by – glycemic index, glycemic load, insulin index – my conclusion is the same. It’s hard for some people to wrap their head around the idea that something in its natural state could cause a similar blood sugar rush to something which everyone with half a brain recognizes as junk food, like ice cream. Even in Matt’s example of the Insulin Index, potatoes are higher than ice cream. Some folks would eat a pile of mashed potatoes without blinking an eye but would suffer a week long guilt attack if they tucked into a pint of ice cream. Please don’t extrapolate my attempt to make this one small point to mean that I think dairy is good for you or you should pop whole sugar cubes as a snack. Nothing of the sort!

Sweet potatoes seem to have become the unwitting target of this debate and they do have some redeeming nutritional value, for sure. But there’s nothing in a sweet potato that you can’t get from another source without the starch. If you’re in it for the nutritional content, then there are better or more “efficient” choices out there in the vegetable world. Same good stuff, less bad stuff.

If, on the other hands, we’re talking about a post workout meal, then absolutely sweet potatoes make a decent choice. The idea in that magic 30-60 time frame after a workout is to drive insulin levels really high in order to “shove nutrients into cells in order to make them grow”, as Matt said. In that case, you’re eating them for precisely the reason that would otherwise make them a less desirable choice – the fact that the load of starch is quickly turned to glucose which quickly stimulates an insulin spike. That magic only works though if you are not inundating your system with starchy or sugary carbs all the time.

Again, sorry for getting up on my little soapbox here. I really only had a small additional point to make on top of your totally solid info. I’m pretty sure we’re basically on the same side!

Thanks for contributing. I hope you are okay with the fact that I jumped on your comment as an opportunity to share more information with my readers.

Melissa