A recent study has suggested that leftover water created from boiling sweet potatoes could be a key to dieting, due to the fact that not only is it healthy to drink but it also has an effect on the appetite which makes people less likely to eat excessively and unnecessarily.
It has been revealed that tropical American tubers ‘Yams’ contain vitamins A, C and B6, as well as being rich in both fibre and carbohydrates, and it has now been discovered by scientists that the waste water left over from cooking these yams contains particular proteins that include useful slimming elements.
Although the research has only been conducted on animals so far, the studies did find that mice that were fed a high fat diet previously lost a significant amount of weight if they were fed this sweet potato water instead, so the next step will be further studies to confirm the slimming effects for humans.
Sweet potatoes in various forms have rapidly become a big hit around the world, and according to the International Potato Centre they are the fifth most important crop globally, with 105 million metric tonnes produced every year.
“We throw out huge volumes of wastewater that contains sweet potato proteins” commented Dr Koji Ishiguro, who conducted the investigation. “We hypothesised that these could affect body weight, fat tissue and other factors. Finding alternative uses for the sweet potato proteins in wastewater could be good for the environment and industry, and also potentially for health.”
The sweet potato water helped to suppress the appetites of the mice as well as controlling their metabolism, and if the results are proven to be the same in humans then this could be a major breakthrough for the many people around the world who are looking for the best ways to diet.
