5 Reasons Why You Might Not be Able to Digest Sweet Potatoes

Have you ever eaten a sweet potato and shortly after felt a “grumpy stomach” coming?

Mine is usually pretty instant. It develops as such: grumpy, growling, gassy and just overall discomfort.

The first few times it happened I thought, “Nope. Not from the sweet potato of course. How could it be?”

The sweet potato is healthy; generally touted as a power food and one of the World’s Healthiest Foods. Like many other “healthy-for-us-foods,” when the gut is compromised “healthy” is not always that simple.

All the “fit-n-healthy” people have told us for years that we need to choose brown rice over white rice and sweet potatoes over white potatoes.

But when the brown rice was hurting me, I dug into the topic a little more. It turns out, if the gut is “off,” brown rice can be too difficult to digest. Why? Because brown rice rocks and has more fiber than white rice. The problem is that that “coating” of fiber the rice contains is difficult to digest. The white rice has been stripped of that, so while the fiber consumption diminishes, the digestibility greatly improves.

I tested the theory – over and over and over again. I digest white rice just fine. I don’t digest brown rice the same way.

Being the food detective I am (and the perfect “guinea pig” on myself), I decided to research and test different things with the sweet potato.

Here are 5 reasons why you might not be able to digest sweet potatoes:

1. Oxalates. If you cannot digest sweet potatoes due to oxalates, your joints could be achy or you might experience other things (that are not necessarily “the gut,” but ultimately are outputs from the digestive system).
2. Fructose and Fiber. In one medium sweet potato, there is 7 g of sugar and 4 g of fiber. It is a very starchy food and therefore with a less-than-optimal gut, sweet potatoes could trigger an issue like fructose malabsorption or even feed into certain gut infections. {And that “stinkiness” you may experience? It’s likely the carbohydrates from the starchy potato fermenting in your gut.}
3. Root Vegetable. The sweet potato is a root vegetable that belongs to the morning glories family. If you have problems with root vegetables (i.e. beets, carrots, celery, onion, potatoes, turnips, etc.), sweet potatoes will be hard for you, too.
4. Combinations. Even on their own, I have a hard time with sweet potatoes. However, one other reason people with gut issues don’t  digest them well is because of the other food(s) eaten with them. Adding additional sugar to them or eating them with a burger or steak can make digestion very tricky as the body is trying to process too many things at once.
5. Amylose. Amylose is one of the major types of digestible polysaccharides or complex carbohydrates. Sweet potatoes contain a lot of amylose, and while that is great for those “dieting,” it’s not necessairly for those with complicated guts. This is also the reason why the digestive enzymes I take and recommend contain “amylase,” to help break this down. Unfortunately, it’s not always enough.

The real and raw truth – the truth that you might not want to hear – is that sweet potatoes should not be this hard to digest.

I don’t know very many people with normally functioning guts that have the problems I do with them.

The reason I cannot tolerate them, and the reason you might find yourself in my same shoes is likely due to a leaky gut (food sensitivity), small bowel infection (negative reaction to fructose) or a colonic infection (reacts poorly to fiber). All three of those could and likely are resulting in this food intolerance.

Like I have mentioned before, I have (even more) serious gut-healing work to do (right alongside my clients) in 2013.

I am so ready to tell you all so much and to kick off 2013 with healing via the 21-Day New Year-New You Program!

Question: Do you digest sweet potatoes?

Love your guts,
SKH